Those following the mobile gaming industry paid notice that the Finnish gaming studio Universomo was shut down (in Finnish) by its owner THQ Wireless, which acquired the Finnish firm back in 2007. Rumors started to spread on Tuesday this week and pretty soon THQ confirmed the liquidation of the studio. This is part of a bigger shift in the game industry.
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The Game Industry In Flux
QAim And TNS Gallup Start Providing Metrics On Most Popular Mobile Sites In Finland
TNS Gallup, Finnish subsidiary of the biggest industry market research expert TNS Global, has teamed up with a mobile customer experience management startup QAim to provide Finland wide tracking of mobile website usage metrics.
Fuugo Creates A New Kind Of Watching Experience
Fuugo is a new kind of television product created by Axel Technologies, a company based in Turku. You can’t really call Axel Technologies a startup as it has been registered way back in 1988. However, Fuugo is a very interesting concept that requires more analysis into it. Fuugo claims to be the next generation TV application for mobile and handheld devices.
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Ideakone Hires Lemmetty, Reveals Future Plans
I had a brief chat this morning with Kai Lemmetty, one of the co-founders of Floobs, a Finnish startup now gone bankrupt. He told me that he has moved on from Floobs to a new startup where he’s helping the team with some new product innovations and bringing in new perspectives to running their business. He’s joined Ideakone, the creators of Kotisivukone (loosely translated as Homepagemachine) and the international version of it, Moogo.
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Mobile Dev Camp Brings Mobile Developers To Helsinki
Mobile Dev Camp is coming to Helsinki on February 27. The second time this event brings together all the mobile developers across the region to hear about the latest trends, meet the other mobile honchos and, well, to develop for mobile platforms.
The event was born from the realization that the hey days of mobile phone manufacturing where behind us here in Finland. Regardless, or maybe because of it, the country is full know how on mobile service development and people with skills to match.
The two themes of the evening of 27th are cross-platform development and mobile apps versus the mobile internet. A timely topics given the state of the web. This means key note presentations, workshops and a MobileDevCamp-Challenge competition. And a hell of a party if its anything like last year.
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.
Gemalto Acquires Valimo Wireless For Undisclosed Sum
Gemalto, provider of end-to-end security solutions, has acquired a Finnish startup Valimo Wireless. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Some of Valimo’s investors included Altine Group, Risto Siilasmaa and SpringBank TechVentures.
Valimo has developed a two-channel, two-factor authentication based on Public Key Infrastructure, combining an over the air platform with a software client in the SIM to generate a legally binding electronic signature. What this jargon from the press release means is that Valimo enables mobile phone users to securely authenticate themselves, digitally sign documents and confirm legally binding transactions simply by entering a self-chosen passphrase or a PIN code. Voilà!
Nutiteq and Mobi Solutions Join Forces For Mobile Location-Based Services
Estonian mobile service company Mobi and mobile mapping firm Nutiteq have announced that Mobi has acquired a 33% stake in Nutiteq. The investment will be used to strengthen Nutiteq’s product development and international marketing. Nutiteq’s provides customized white label open mobile mapping applications for developers, service and content providers.
Mobile Publishing Platform Provider Conmio Lands A-Round Funding
Finnish VC Inventure has invested 2 million USD into Finnish mobile publishing platform firm Conmio. The financing will be used to support Conmio’s international growth and product development. Conmio sees many opportunities for expansion due to the strong demand for mobile services. Conmio’s target customers include media firms, device manufacturers and other companies interested in providing mobile solutions to their customers or end users.
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Nokia, Please Try!
Some ten years back I was fascinated about the stories Nokia told about the upcoming technological evolution of mobile phones. As a Finn, I was of course proud of Nokia’s success, and almost religiously believed in Anssi Vanjoki’s preaches. He said that in a few years, most of the cellphones would contain a camera, and a significant portion will also have a GPS receiver. Nokia would be shaping the markets dramatically. Now we can see that it was true.
In parallel with the device evolution, irreversible changes have emerged in business, communication, information, personal and social life and wherever you can imagine, along with the internet era. We have changed our behavior, thinking, expectations and so on because of so many internet-enabled services. We have learned to want services and tools that work. No more can we tolerate applications the setup or use of which requires a technical expert. And frankly, we want it and often get it for free. A great range of software applications, services, hosting, disk space, whatever – in practice for free. Just select what you like most.
Kuneri Launches Alpha Version Of Mobile Joomla! For Mobilizing Your Website (We Have Invites)
Kuneri has launched a limited Alpha of Mobile Joomla! as a way to easily mobilize websites made with Joomla!, a popular and extremely extensible open source content management system. Joomla! has a huge developer community and maybe some 30 million websites created using it, including quite a few corporate and high traffic sites.
Kuneri Mobile Joomla! allows out-of-the-box mobilization of Joomla! websites within minutes. The admin interface of Mobile Joomla! allows one to determine the mobile site outlook and optimization methods even handset by handset. One can for example have a higher end graphics and layout for iPhone and smartphones, and more basic site for feature phones.
Event Report: Mobile Monday
On Monday night Squace hosted the first of a new generation of Mobile Monday events in Stockholm. The evening featured pitches by 6 young companies in the mobile space, followed by commentary from an expert panel of tech. journalists, investors, and senior members of the tech. community. After the presentation, attendees were asked to vote on the most interesting company, with the winner getting a nomination for the Mobile Peer Award at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This nomination carries some weight, since last years nomination, PopCatcher, went on to win the special jury award.
The following is a quick rundown of the companies that presented last night, and who will be representing Stockholm in Barcelona next month. Continue reading »
Rightware Buys Futuremark’s Mobile Unit And Closes A €3m Investment
Finnish startup Rightware acquires Futuremark’s mobile and embedded business unit.
Rightware is really a spin-off from Futuremark that was just founded at the end of 2009. At the same time the company announced the deal with Futuremark, they announced a closing of a €3m investment from Inventure and Nexit Ventures.
With the funding, Rightware will accelerate development and marketing of Kanzi. Kanzi is a taylor made solution specifically for mobile phones and automotive applications as well as Futuremark’s established device performance measurement products and services for mobile and embedded industries. Kanzi enables manufacturers of mobile phones and automotive display & infotainment systems to create richer and more intuitive user interfaces in radically less time than it takes with conventional tools and methods.
We Read The Morgan Stanley Mobile Internet Report So You Don’t Have To
The research unit of US Investment Bank Morgan Stanley today released a triple threat evaluation of the mobile internet industry, including a 422-page report, 692-page presentation, and a 92-page “summary” of the aforementioned. There’s just something about speculative research from financial institutions that seems so rational, pure, and free of the enthusiastic support that those in the industry like to give each other. The report starts by stating that we are in the early part of the fifth major technology cycle of the last fifty years, and that as each new cycle unfolds, “the number of devices and users rises by a factor of ten.” It continues by stating, “the winners in each new innovation cycle create more market capitalization than the winners of the last cycle.”
Given that positive outlook, lets take a look at how the rest of the report breaks down, and what it could mean for mobile internet entrepreneurs in Northern Europe.
Steam Republic Brings Bands Direct-To-Fan
Steam Republic, a Finnish startup in the mobile space, is focusing on digital fan oriented marketing. They are big in mobile and want to enable bands to control the relationship with their own fans and consequentially make money through that.
Steam Republic was previously called Backstage Alliance. The company has participated and won several competitions under both names. Latest is the Appsfire App Star Awards where they were a finalist (see video below). They have also landed their first international agreement with EMI record label (UK) and are pushing out their first international pilot with You Me At Six already at the end of this week if all goes as planned.
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