Tech Industry Catches It’s Breath -- NY Times
“It’s like with evolution, where you have a mutation and then a great explosion of diversity,” said Scott A. McGregor, the chief executive of Broadcom, which makes chips that go into a wide range of consumer electronics. “Then, you have a period where you see which creatures can survive the big change.”

Facebook announces mobile strategy and announces Facebook Zero mobile-web interface.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VVHWQQPUc0

The quick summary is that Facebook is providing a mobile-web interface to it’s web site that works across most phones and languages, will support SMS for messaging, and will continue to expand their presence in the mobile app space through new applications and also developer services (a la Connect). It sounds like mobile is a core element of their strategy, which makes sense if the goal is global user adoption.

Opera Demos Its iPhone Web Browser, It’s Damn Fast & Will Be Submitted To Apple
“Opera demonstrated yesterday in Barcelona an iPhone version of its mobile web browser, Opera Mini, and it’s damn fast. How fast? Well, about five times faster than your current safari mobile on a 3GS. The trick resides in the way it processes websites.”

That’s great, but as many have noted it is not likely that Apple will allow this to be released on the iTunes app store. Additionally, I’m not sure how I feel about how it works. All Opera browser internet requests would be routed through Opera, who would act as a proxy to retrieve the content and send it to the browser in an optimized format. Regardless, this is a pretty interesting technology.

Skype in a Struggle to Be Heard on Mobile Phones
“Most operators and network equipment makers still perceive Skype and other Internet phone call providers to be potential freeloaders, stealing their customers while they invest billions of dollars to build out and upgrade mobile networks.” (Skype announced a partnership with Verizon in the US at the conference)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt at MWC Puts Mobile First
“”Here, right now, we understand the new rule is ‘mobile first’ in everything. Perhaps the phrase should be ‘mobile first’ simply because it’s time to be proud of what we have built together. Our job is to make mobile be the answer to everything.”

What is the meta-story?

1. We’re seeing the largest internet businesses move aggressively into the mobile space
2. The mobile-web will be at least as important as mobile apps, and the large web properties are converting their sites to work accordingly
3. There is a shake-up in progress of the smartphone value chain. The role of the platform, OEM, carrier, and application developers is shifting, and this is resulting in questions about which apps will be allowed on each platform (skype, opera, etc). It also creates tension between the carriers, oems, and platforms all of which would like a bigger piece of the pie at the end of the day.

There is still one more day to go in the conference — we’ll see what else develops.

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“A group of mobile phone operators launched Monday an alliance to build a single platform for the hugely popular applications that allow users to play games and read news on their handsets.”

Mobile firms unite to offer single apps platform

What will the future bring? There are a few choices:

1) Carriers (e.g. AT&T)
2) Mobile platforms (e.g. Google, RIM and Apple)
3) Device makers (e.g. LG, Motorola, etc)

This will probably depend on how successful the carrier stores are with consumers, the ease-of-development of carrier platforms, and economics (developers will go where the dollars are eventually).

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We’re still waiting to get our hands on a device to try the new OS out. While the list of carrier and device partnerships is extensive, it will be some time before phones running the OS are available in the market:

“Carrier partnerships are far and wide, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, while hardware partners include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm. We’re told that we likely won’t get to see any third-party devices at MWC, though Microsoft is showing off dev units of unknown origin, and the first handsets are supposed to hit the market by the holidays of this year.” -- Engadget

In the mean time, here is the latest coverage:

Hands-on demo of Phone 7 from MobileCrunch

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTD_CnTyeUk

Microsoft Phone 7 Series Official Product Page

http://www.windowsphone7series.com/

“A different kind of phone…coming holiday 2010.”

Engaged hands-on review of Phone 7

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series-hands-on-and-impressions/

“f you’ve used the Zune HD, you know what this is like. Lots of bold text on the device, lists with text cut off on the sides of the phone, and additional screens to the left and right driven by arrows pointing you in either direction. “

NY Times Coverage of the launch:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/technology/16phone.html

“The product marks a rare moment when Microsoft scrapped previous versions of its software in favor of building something new from scratch.”

It will be quite some time before this platform is able to make an impact on the marketshare of mobile platforms. But it will have an impact on the behavior of incumbent platforms. How will this affect Apple’s strategy in managing the iPhone platform, carrier relationships, and developer community? How will google seek to set obstacles in the path of Microsoft in the ecosystem?

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There are some interesting bits of data in there which are worth taking note of:

1. Android is gaining market share *fast.* It has gained marketshare more quickly than the iPhone lately, though it still represents a relatively small market. This is good news not just for Google, but also for developers and publishers.
2. There are vast differences between the most popular mobile phones, the most popular smartphones, and the mobile phones most used to access the web and mobile applications. I wish this report included a by-device breakdown of usage, because I suspect there are huge gaps between how RIM, Android, and iPhone devices are used today. eMarketer did publish some statistics about smartphone usage patterns showing that Palm, RIM, and Windows smartphone users don’t use apps as much as Android and iPhone users.
3. Microsoft continues to suffer mobile OS marketshare losses, declining from 19% to 18% in only one month. Expect a major market entry by them shortly. They will not simply ignore the mobile phone/application/web market, it’s too big an opportunity.
4. There were no surprise entries in the list from LG, Samsung, etc in the smartphone category. Expect these manufacturers to fight hard to gain smartphone marketshare in the US throughout 2010.

A question:

If RIM has the highest penetration of the smartphone market, why isn’t there more buzz from developers about this platform? What does RIM need to do to be more successful in creating a developer community? Or is it a device which is popular mainly with the enterprise crowd, not consumers?

Something to think about in planning your own mobile initiatives.

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