While the Consumer Electronics Show and other big events feature acres of tiny booths crammed one against another, Mobile World Congress features a different kind of bigness. The show is spread out over eight big buildings in a historic area of town. Every couple of buildings are set several flights of stairs up from the last one, with the final two buildings just a stone’s throw from the grand National Palace.

Connecting the buildings and lining the promenade between them are various smaller trailers and bungalows.

Unlike the cramped booths at CES, the spread-out nature of Mobile World Congress allows even moderate-size companies a good amount of space to show their wares. Even those with bungalows outside a main hall stand a good chance of attracting visitors. Companies that went with that approach included Acer and INQ Mobile, which was touting its new Android phone with quick access to Facebook and Spotify.

That said, some folks’ presence at Mobile World Congress is clearly bigger than others.

One booth that stands out is Google’s first-ever Android booth, tucked in the corner of Hall 8, just inside the entrance.

The two-story pavilion features many of Google’s partners showing Android applications, as well as a place to create one’s own Android mini-me, plus a sushi-bar-style conveyor belt featuring the many phone and tablet designs based on the Google operating system. Among the designs that scrolled by while I was standing there were well-known names such as Samsung and HTC, as well as less-familiar brands such as China’s ZTE and Alcatel, which is new to Android.

Perhaps the pièce de résistance of the booth is a slide that allows children of all chronological ages to relive their youth and glide down from the top floor back to the bottom. The most popular thing, though, was a series of collectible pins being passed out throughout Mobile World Congress by various Android partners. They were a hot commodity, and by Tuesday afternoon most booths were completely out of their supply of pins, placing green candy inside the dishes instead.

While impressive, the Android booth was not the largest by any stretch. One of the more massive setups I saw was the Ericsson booth, which occupied nearly all of Hall 6. A small Sony Ericsson booth was open to the public. Behind a security gate, though, was a massive spread for the many partners of both Ericsson and Sony Ericsson. It featured two bars and two kiosks serving various tapas.

There were meeting rooms and patio tables for more-casual interactions. On display were all kinds of Ericsson technologies ranging from its core infrastructure gear to all kinds of other products and research projects.

A few caught my eye, including a mobile payment section that featured a “Museum of Money” talking about days gone by when people used paper currency with all its flaws. Under glass were such relics as money, piggy banks and counterfeit-detection pens, while Ericsson showed off its many payment technologies.

In another corner, Ericsson was showing off a vending machine that is paid, not with cash or credit card, but via SMS message. Ericsson has a unit that serves as an intermediary between the vendor and the carrier to manage the transaction.

The cellphone maker is hoping that its PlayStation phone, combined with several other new smartphones, will help lift the company to the top of the Android race as opposed to being just one of the pack.

In an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Sony Ericsson CTO Jan Uddenfeldt told Mobilized that the company intends to capitalize on Sony technologies beyond gaming, particularly in the areas of screens and cameras.

“We think we have a really competitive edge,” said Uddenfeldt. The Xperia Arc, for example, uses the Bravia Engine that comes from Sony’s television heritage. “We will introduce 3-D technology and that will come from Sony, of course.

Uddenfeldt said that the company is now leading on Android as well, being the first company outside of Google itself to release a Gingerbread-based phone, with its Arc that was announced at CES. At Mobile World Congress, it announced the Xperia Play and two other phones.

“From being a little bit of a laggard when it comes to Android releases, we are now the leader,” he said. “We intend to really stay that way. Our intention is to be the number one player in this Android world.”

First and foremost, Uddenfeldt said the company has to be a leader when it comes to using both the latest version of Android and the newest chips and other hardware. “It is a technology race, so it is very important to be on the latest technology,” he said.

With Xperia Play, Uddenfeldt said, the company has something that takes advantage of the latest and greatest version of Android but also does something unique.

“We don’t see anyone else doing this in the near future,” he said. In addition to being PlayStation certified, it will also work with a lot of Android games, including many customized just for the Play.

“Most of the games that we will launch are actually non-Sony-based games, Android games,” he said, referring to deals with Gameloft and EA Sports to create Xperia Play-optimized titles. “There’s going to be like 50 games when we launch the product in March or April.”

Though most Americans wouldn’t know it, Sony Ericsson is a top-three global player in Android phones, with about 20 percent market share, he said. Until recently, Uddenfeldt said, the company would tend to introduce phones first in Europe and Asia, bringing them to the U.S. several months later–and that, he said, “was absolutely not the right strategy.”

“The U.S. is now the leading market,” he said. “The U.S. is the country where the most advanced products are being launched first. That was not the case two or three years ago.”

Sony Ericsson is realizing this and is changing, he said, noting that Verizon will be among the first carriers to offer the Play. “We will work very closely with AT&T in launching different products as well,” he added.

The company is also shifting more of its design and engineering to the U.S., Uddenfeldt said, noting that the Redwood Shores, Calif., office where he works, established just two years ago, now has about 300 workers doing everything from product design and engineering to business development.

“It’s the right place to be,” he said. “We have Android there. We have Facebook.”

Uddenfeldt has a unique perspective, having been with Sony Ericsson for only six months but at the same time being a 30-year Ericsson veteran and being based in Silicon Valley for the past several years. He’s also not afraid to admit that the company has made mistakes, including in the past year as it tried to move from proprietary Walkman and Cybershot phones to a fully Android-based lineup.

“I don’t think Sony Ericsson fully understood the importance of being on the latest Android release,” he said. “That kind of hindered a little bit the growth of the company during last year.”

However, he said, with the move to Android, the company has stemmed its losses and has now had four profitable quarters. This year, he said, it is time for growth.

Financial markets have sent Nokia shares lower, workers have been up in arms and earlier on Tuesday a group of young Nokia investors posted an open letter on the Web calling for the Nokia chief executive to rethink his plans and instead opt for a “Plan B” that would have Nokia maintain ownership of the software layer of its phones.

But Elop said he is not surprised there has been some negative reaction. Elop noted that he has had months to weigh all the options and grow comfortable with the Windows Phone-led strategy, while others are still digesting it.

“There is both an intellectual journey and an emotional journey through which we all need to go,” Elop told Mobilized during a chat on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. “I’ve had four and a half months to go through the journey.”

As for workers walking off the job last Friday, Elop also seemed to take that in stride. “To the extent that workers need time to go through that emotional journey, that’s something I completely understand.”

While Elop said the main reason he went with Windows Phone was the opportunity for sustainable differentiation, he noted that the billions of dollars from Microsoft doesn’t hurt.

Elop said that the value of the deal reflects not just the standard business terms, but also the fact that Nokia was a “swing vote” in the mobile market and could have gone to Google and Android.

“That, by itself, has substantial value,” Elop said. “In addition to revenue streams one would normally calculate into a deal, there is a clear recognition of a special value that we are providing for which we are receiving compensation–value, money, however you want to describe it–measured in the ‘B’s not ‘M’s.”

The revenue, which was euphemistically referred to during last week’s investor event as “marketing support” will show up over the life of the deal, Elop said, and allow the company to invest more or flow through to its bottom line.

“To be clear it’s not about the money,” Elop said. “If we can be no different than anybody else, then at end of the day margins erode.”

Elop also noted that Nokia is committing fully to Windows Phone, where as Microsoft’s other partners are largely doing products for Google’s operating system as well.

“Some of the other OEMs do their best work for Android right now,” he said.

Although Nokia hasn’t committed to releasing a Windows Phone this year, Smart Devices head Jo Harlow said onstage at Nokia’s press conference that she is feeling the heat to do so.

Elop clarified where that heat was coming from. “From me,” he said. “From me.”

Update: Asked for comment on the Plan B letter, Nokia offered a brief statement.

“We are aware of the letter being posted, but have not been directly contacted,” the company said. “Nokia’s new strategy has full approval of the Board of Directors and the Nokia Leadership Team, and our focus now is on the execution of this new strategy.”

“The experience has to be the same,” Costolo said during an afternoon keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “I shouldn’t have to think how to use Twitter.”

About 40 percent of tweets come from a mobile device, while half of all active users are active on more than one device, he said.

Until not that long ago, Twitter built only the product for the Web and let third parties handle phones and other devices. In recent months, though, it has scooped up various app makers and now offers official apps for the major smartphones. However, given that those official apps stem from different acquisitions, they often work in different ways.

Costolo said the company also wants to make sure that one doesn’t have to sign up and follow lots of people to get something out of the service.

“We want Twitter to be instantly useful,” he said.

With Twitter for Windows Phone 7, the company introduced the notion, already present on the Web, that one shouldn’t have to be an active user to have Twitter on their phone.

His talk is still ongoing and I’ll update things as it continues.

5:32 pm: Costolo said the company will begin offering crowdsourced translations of the service into Russian, Turkish and Indonesian and, later this year, will have its own translation to Portuguese.

5:33 pm: Some stats from Super Bowl, this year.

4,000 tweets per second at the end of the game and 3,000 tweets per second during the game. That was 27 tweets per second in 2008.

The overall record is New Year’s Eve in Japan (the country has a single time zone) and the prior sporting event record was from last year’s World Cup.

5:34 pm: Twitter is actually bringing things back to live TV and away from the DVR.

“That’s not just happening with live sporting events,” Costolo said. He cites game shows in the U.K.

5:36 pm: “Glee,” for example, has 30 times the number of tweets about it when the show is on.

Takeaway: the long-talked about second screen of interactive TV is here and it is Twitter.

5:38 pm: About Twitter as a business: The short answer is we are already making money, Costolo said. The really good thing, he said, is that businesses can use the service in the same way as others–building community around shared interest.

5:41 pm: A viral campaign of note. Al-Jazeera highlighting its coverage of the events in the Middle East and North Africa with the hashtag #demandaljazeera to get its programming on U.S. cable systems.

5:44 pm: Costolo, on the role of Twitter and Facebook in recent events there:

“I think that takes away from what these people have accomplished,” he said. “We are probably a very small piece of the puzzle.”

5:47 pm: On to Q&A. Battery is running low, but hoping to make it through the question period.

First question came in over Twitter and asks what is the company’s biggest fear.

“Twitter’s biggest fear is lack of execution,” Costolo said, saying he tries to convince workers not to focus on competitors. “If we execute on what we are trying to do we will be successful.”

5:48 pm: A couple of questions on local trends and translations. Costolo said that crowdsourcing offers a way to do more translations quickly, while the trends piece requires more work on Twitter’s part, some of which should be done this year.

5:53 pm: What is the biggest mistake Twitter has made?

Costolo said company’s founders would say they shot themselves in the foot, head and everywhere else not hiring or scaling fast enough.

“I think we are out of the woods on that one,” Costolo said.

Next question is on what Twitter is doing in response to its pivotal role in Arabic-speaking countries right now. Costolo noted that Twitter doesn’t yet support right-to-left languages.

On being blocked, Costolo said Twitter is only a 350-person company and doesn’t have the resources of some larger companies. “We try to just leverage our own platform to plead for help,” he said.

5:58 pm: Costolo is asked if there is a need for Twitter-branded smartphones.

“No,” Costolo said. “I believe there is a need for Twitter in the existing platforms.”

Earlier in his keynote, Costolo said he wants deep integration so that when a user takes a picture they don’t have to open a separate app to tweet out that picture.

6:03 pm: As for rumors that Google might be willing to pay $10 billion for the company.

“I don’t know where these things come from,” Costolo said. “It’s just a rumor.”

6:03 pm: End of keynote. (just as my battery was on its last sliver of red, too!

The new Snapdragon processors feature the company’s Krait chip design aimed specifically at mobile phones and tablets. The company said that the new chips offer up to 12 times as much performance as the original Snapdragon processors and, because they use a new, thinner generation of wiring, can use as little as a quarter as much power as the originals.

“We’ve really taken performance to the next level,” Qualcomm Vice President Raj Talluri said in an interview at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the chipmaker is announcing the new processors. Talluri said the chips will be particularly useful in gaming and augmented-reality applications and also support things such as recording 3-D video and playing back 3-D videos, without the need for glasses.

Talluri acknowledged that Qualcomm lost some ground in being later than Nvidia to move to dual-core chips, but said that the company expects 10 tablets using its processors to hit the market this year. HP plans to use a dual-core Qualcomm processor in its new webOS tablet.

“They got a couple,” Talluri said. “You’ll see a lot more from us.”

Qualcomm also benefits from two other industry moves–Nokia’s move to adopt Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft’s decision to enable full-blown Windows to run on ARM-based processors such as Snapdragon.

The Nokia move is noteworthy because Qualcomm has been at the heart of nearly all of the Windows Phone 7 designs thus far, giving it a huge opening to land Nokia–a company that thus far has not used much in the way of chips from Qualcomm.

“This one really provides a great opportunity for us,” Talluri said. “We can provide them a really quick time to market.”

As for the move to bring Windows to ARM-based chips, Talluri said that opens the door for Qualcomm to power whole new types of devices beyond phones and tablets.

“It extends our reach higher than phones,” he said. But, as with phones, Qualcomm will find plenty of competition as Nvidia and TI are also eager to give Intel a run for its money in the PC market.

However, the youthful chief executive said that as a big mobile geek, he’s excited to see what all the phone makers have in store.

“This is like the South by Southwest of mobile,” Crowley said, referring to Austin’s annual tech and culture festival.

He’s also eager to meet with carriers and phone makers to convince them to more deeply integrate Foursquare into their devices and services.

People mistakenly think of Foursquare as just a game where people boast to their friends about all the places they have been, Crowley said, but what underlies that is a hugely powerful database of places filled with all kinds of recommendations and other inside information.

Over time, Crowley hopes Foursquare will be able to tap the aggregate data and serve it up in useful ways, as well as help individuals get personalized recommendations based on their past check-ins.

One way Mobilized tries to get a sense for the strength of the different mobile platforms is by asking time-crunched developers how they are allocating resources. Crowley said Foursquare, which now has about 50 employees, has three developers on iPhone and two each on Android and BlackBerry. The company used outside partners to create its Nokia and Windows Phone 7 apps.

As for Crowley, he’s been splitting his time between an Android device and his beloved iPhone. His well-worn phone is covered front and back with various stickers–all the easier to pick out his device, he says. But Crowley doesn’t have the iPhone 4, instead sticking with the 3GS. Crowley said his colleagues all upgrade to the latest and greatest and someone needs to make sure the service still works on older gear.

“I like to keep it one generation behind,” he said. “Someone’s got to take one for the team.”

I pressed him on the potential for dangers with all this checking-in, including concerns about physical safety. Without trying to dismiss the issue, Crowley noted that he’s been checking in with his location as long as anyone–since 2000–and has yet to have anything bad happen. The worst thing that’s happened to him, he said, is people showing up to parties uninvited.

For more from Crowley, check out the video we did in the lobby of his Barcelona hotel.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110213/checking-in-with-foursquares-dennis-crowley-at-mobile-world-congress-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110213/a-newbies-guide-to-mobile-world-congress-from-a-barcelona-newbie/ http://allthingsd.com/20110213/a-newbies-guide-to-mobile-world-congress-from-a-barcelona-newbie/#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 11:00:27 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3984 Heading to Barcelona for my first Mobile World Congress, I wanted to know what I was in for, so I decided to email a few Barcelona veterans to get their advice.

In Google terms, I cheated by copying off more established rivals. However, as Bing might put it, I just added a few new inputs to my coverage algorithm.

In any case, here’s what I learned overall. Barcelona is filled with pickpockets. I’ll need comfortable shoes to navigate the vast trade show and chase after said pickpockets. There’s way too much going on, so I should give up now. The food is amazing, but I will be too busy to eat any of it and should pick up some candy bars now.

On the news front, expect a lot of stuff on tablets, as well as interesting new gear from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC, LG and China’s ZTE.

Here are some other specific tips I pulled out of the many awesome emails, for which I am deeply grateful. To reward those who shared their knowledge so generously, I have pulled the following out of context to present the more humorous ones and saved the most useful ones for myself.

From Mobile Industry Review’s Ewan MacLeod:

“Whatever you have actually planned, cut that in half and you might end up completing it. On my first year I booked about 40 interviews all over the place in different halls. By 11 am on Monday I was screwed.”

And:

“Phone signal is typically rubbish. It’s a real pain when people are trying to demonstrate things. Expect 2G/GPRS and if you get 3G, it’s a bonus. With thousands of people on-site, each with 2-3 devices, it’s no surprise the networks can’t handle it.”

From TechnoBuffalo’s Noah Kravitz:

“Pickpockets are no joke. Listen to what your Mom told you the first time you were in a big city as a kid, and stuff your wallet way the heck down your front pants pocket when you walk on the streets. Seriously. And avoid big crowds of swarming people suddenly hell-bent on getting cozy with you. No joke.”

From CrunchGear’s Greg Kumparak:

“Eat everything you can find. The food is rarely disappointing.”

From Eric Zeman of Phone Scoop:

“The Fira (where the event takes place) is a whacked-out maze, and is confusing. Study a floorplan ahead of time, or find an official map/floorplan that you can download to your phone. It takes longer to get from place to place than you might think, because there is never a direct path. Give yourself enough travel time in between meetings.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110213/a-newbies-guide-to-mobile-world-congress-from-a-barcelona-newbie/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110212/mobilized-hits-barcelona-as-mobile-world-congress-kicks-off/ http://allthingsd.com/20110212/mobilized-hits-barcelona-as-mobile-world-congress-kicks-off/#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 07:33:48 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3973 After a very early flight to Barcelona on Saturday, Mobilized hit the ground running to try to get a quick sense of Barcelona before Mobile World Congress begins later on Sunday.

Luckily, the bus from the airport dropped me off smack-dab in the center of the event facilities. Within two minutes I had my badge and was ready to see the city. Embracing my newbie status, I forked over way too many euros for a pass on the tourist bus to get a sense of the city.

The bus was a worthy investment though, giving a great overview of what clearly is a beautiful and amazing place.

Unfortunately, I threw my back out just as I was due to climb about a million stairs to the amazing Parque Güell, a park filled with Gaudi sculpture and buildings.

Limping badly, I headed back to my room, to ice and meds, and offered fervent prayers that all would be better in time for a very busy Sunday.

On the news front, a bunch of Sunday’s news is already out there as both Samsung and Sony Ericsson have had a good portion of the products leak. Sony Ericsson is led, of course, by the Xperia Play, the Android-based PlayStation phone that was touted during the Super Bowl. Samsung, meanwhile, is set to unveil the Galaxy S II, the successor to its Galaxy S line, as well as its next Galaxy Tab lines, with the former gaining a thinner shape and improved screen, while the latter is due to add Honeycomb.

Mobilized has tons of fun interviews set up in addition to planning to scramble to as many keynotes, panels and press conferences as we can manage. We’ll be catching back up with Valentines Nokia and Microsoft, checking in on Google and seeing all the handsets we can handle.

To make sure you are not missing anything, click on the box to the bottom right, which will take you to our spiffy Mobile World Congress page, or bookmark this link. My colleagues stateside, including longtime mobile industry vet Tricia Duryee, will be posting as well.

Well, I’m off to catch a bit more Barcelona before the big event kicks off.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110212/mobilized-hits-barcelona-as-mobile-world-congress-kicks-off/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100216/new-blackberry-browser-more-like-safari-than-mosaic/ http://allthingsd.com/20100216/new-blackberry-browser-more-like-safari-than-mosaic/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:12:39 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34905 The mobile browsing experience on Research in Motion’s BlackBerry is widely considered among the worst around. Inefficient and miserably slow, it is easily bested not just by the browsers of rival smartphones like Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, but by third-party alternatives like Opera Mini. So long-suffering BlackBerry owners will be glad to hear that an all-new Web browser is on the way.

During his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, this morning, RIM (RIMM) co-CEO Mike Lazaridis demonstrated the forthcoming browser, which is based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone and phones based on Google’s (GOOG) Android OS. Slated for release sometime later this year, the browser is allegedly more network-efficient than its rivals and handles AJAX, CSS and HTML5 with ease.

Indeed, Lazaridis said it scored 100 percent on the Acid 3 test for Web rendering. Seems RIM’s acquisition of browser-design firm Torch Mobile last year was a wise one–albeit late. Lazaridis also said the browser will be available sometime later this year. Below, two video demos.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100216/new-blackberry-browser-more-like-safari-than-mosaic/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100216/intel-and-nokia-get-cute-with-mobile-software/ http://allthingsd.com/20100216/intel-and-nokia-get-cute-with-mobile-software/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:00:29 +0000 Don Clark http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=21323 When executives from Intel (INTC) and Nokia (NOK) took the stage in Barcelona Monday to explain their latest joint effort, both sides hastened to say they wanted to avoid the “f-word.” That’s “f” as in “fragmentation.”

The term arises because the world of operating systems for cellphones is extremely complicated and seems to be getting more so, not like the neat world of PCs where Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows dominates. In smartphones, programmers have many potential targets for their application-development efforts.

There’s Apple’s (AAPL) hot iPhone, which has its own operating system and a vast array of apps. Google (GOOG), meanwhile, not only has its Linux-based Android operating system for cellphones but is promising to develop what it calls Chrome OS for broader applications.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100216/intel-and-nokia-get-cute-with-mobile-software/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100211/nokia-connecting-people-with-boredom-at-mwc/ http://allthingsd.com/20100211/nokia-connecting-people-with-boredom-at-mwc/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:40:19 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34742

“As an alternative to the noise and crowds at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, invited guests can relax on comfy sofas, enjoy delicious food and drinks as they discuss the industry and network with their peers–all courtesy of Nokia.”

– Nokia’s pitch for its Mobile World Congress Exhibit

Good thing Nokia is providing “comfy sofas” at its Mobile World Congress digs next week–sounds like attendees are going to need them.

Why? Well, the company is evidently taking a novel approach to MWC: It is attending, but with no new phones to show off.

How odd. Nokia (NOK) is, after all, the world’s largest mobile phone maker. And MWC is the mobile phone industry’s biggest annual event. For the company to show up empty-handed at a time when competition in the smartphone market is so heated and Nokia’s share so…fluid, seems unwise–particularly when the rumor sites have been ginning up expectations for new devices, including the 12-megapixel camera-touting, 720p video-shooting, multitouch N8-00.

As MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen observes, “It would be a problem to have no introduction now because people want to see Nokia has something up its sleeve for summer.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100211/nokia-connecting-people-with-boredom-at-mwc/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100208/microsofts-new-mobile-phone-software-is-coming-and-its-project-pink-still-lives-but-should-it-just-give-up-and-buy-rim/ http://allthingsd.com/20100208/microsofts-new-mobile-phone-software-is-coming-and-its-project-pink-still-lives-but-should-it-just-give-up-and-buy-rim/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:06:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24143

Next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft is likely to unveil Windows Mobile 7, the new version of its mobile operating system, trying to create some excitement around its foundering mobile strategy.

“Foundering” is probably kind, given the innovative strides both Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) have made in the smartphone arena in recent years by comparison.

That’s why rumors about the various attributes of the new mobile OS escalated again after Microsoft (MSFT) CFO Peter Klein noted at the company’s most recent earnings call: “As we have been saying from a product perspective, we are working very hard on the next version of Windows Mobile…we will be talking more about that in Barcelona in a few weeks.”

The most prominent of those rumors is that the new OS morphs into a kind of “ZunePhone,” incorporating functionality from the software of Microsoft’s digital music player.

And as one hand does software, Microsoft has also been doing the smartphone equivalent of a Long March with its “Project Pink,” the long anticipated multimedia touchscreen device that has been in development for a while by its Premium Mobile Experiences group.

That team is apparently hidden away in a Seattle office–as opposed to its nearby Redmond, Wash., HQ–and still includes some employees from Danger, the iconic company that designed the once-popular Sidekick mobile phone and was bought by Microsoft in 2008 for $500 million.

There, both Microsoft-designed hardware and software are being created, with some sort of device to come out this year, sources said, despite persistent rumors that the whole project would be scotched.

The hope–when the tech giant finally does end this very long gestation–is that it can finally get some traction in the increasingly important smartphone space, which is dominated by Apple’s iPhone and, farther behind, phones using Google’s Android operating system.

While Microsoft tirelessly argues that Windows mobile software is on many more phones around the globe than that of competitors, the challenge is clear externally–and internally, if you listen carefully to the griping about the company’s mobile strategy, which one exec there recently admitted to me was an “embarrassment.”

Indeed, this is why Microsoft and its giant wallet might be better served by buying one of the big and more established telecom companies, such as Research in Motion (RIMM), Palm (PALM) or even–as another Microsoft exec said to me, “Why not?”–Nokia (NOK).

Nokia has a market cap of close to $50 billion, with RIM at close to $38 billion. And Palm? A paltry $1.74 billion. Microsoft’s current valuation is $246 billion, and the company has $40 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand.

While the purchase of Danger was pricey given how little it has yielded as yet, to do such a deal would send shock waves throughout the industry and–if it were Nokia or RIM, both of which are non-U.S.-based companies–change the game immediately.

And, in fact, many sources at Microsoft have told me that CEO Steve Ballmer has expressed interest in buying RIM many times (while also dismissing any interest in Palm).

Well, at least, Ballmer is thinking big. And he should, because mobile, which everyone knows is the key platform in the coming era of computing, will be all about getting–as the saying goes–big or getting out.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100208/microsofts-new-mobile-phone-software-is-coming-and-its-project-pink-still-lives-but-should-it-just-give-up-and-buy-rim/feed/ 14 http://allthingsd.com/20100119/microsoft-to-launch-zune-phone-in-2-months/ http://allthingsd.com/20100119/microsoft-to-launch-zune-phone-in-2-months/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:28:17 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=32958 Microsoft has long claimed that its mobile strategy is to provide a software solution, not devices. As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees of a McGraw-Hill (MHP) media conference last spring:

“With Windows Mobile, we want to permit a range of hardware innovation, and yet, still have a pretty good experience end-to-end, with good applications, and we want the ability for software developers to target both a very high-end and a lower range or mid-range phone. And the ability to scale up and down, to work with multiple hardware vendors, to get a range of competition and innovation and price competition amongst the hardware guys is a big asset. It is certainly what our strategy is.”

That being the case, it’s intriguing to learn that talk of Microsoft’s (MSFT) long-rumored “Pink” phone project has started up again. In a note to clients today, Jefferies & Company analyst Katherine Egbert claims that Redmond is gearing up to launch a phone based on Windows Mobile 7.

“Our recent industry checks indicate Microsoft will be debuting its own phone sometime in the next two months,” Egbert writes. “We expect the new phone to debut soon, at either the Feb 15-18 Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona Spain, or possibly at CTIA in Las Vegas one month later.”

The device, “a Zune-like phone” according to Egbert–is likely the result of an OEM partnership similar to the one between Google (GOOG) and HTC that produced the Nexus One. She believes it will boast a five-megapixel camera and support 720p HD video and some music subscription/purchasing scheme.

Beyond that, Egbert is at a loss. “We don’t have any information about the cost of the Pink phone, nor do we know what service providers might be partnered with Microsoft,” she explains.

“Revenue from the phone is also very unlikely to be meaningful for many years,” the analyst adds. “However, the new phone might explain why Microsoft has allowed WinMo to dwindle to <10% mobile OS market share. Pink would be the 'third screen' (after Windows and Xbox) and final component in Microsoft's '3 screens and a cloud' strategy."

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100119/microsoft-to-launch-zune-phone-in-2-months/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090508/youtube-may-be-solving-its-ad-problem-slowly/ http://allthingsd.com/20090508/youtube-may-be-solving-its-ad-problem-slowly/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 12:52:57 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=7174 YouTube is the world’s biggest video destination. But it has yet to generate a penny of profit for Google, which paid more than $1.6 billion for the site in 2006.

That’s because the site is very expensive to run–YouTube served up 5.5 billion videos to U.S. viewers alone in March–and a very hard sell to advertisers, who are scared off by its more-or-less-anything-goes collection of clips. The site doesn’t even bother to try sell ads on more then a small percentage of its videos.

But the latter part of that equation may be changing, argues Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay. He thinks YouTube has the ability to sell ads against nine percent of its inventory. That alone represents progress–last year, that number was around three to four percent.

But Lindsay thinks that Google (GOOG) is getting better at putting more advertiser-friendly stuff up on the site, via projects like the TV and movie hub it rolled out last month.

That site doesn’t have anything like the breadth that Hulu boasts, but it’s a big improvement over what used to be there. Lindsay figures that it will get better and that next year YouTube will be able to sell ads on 15 percent of its inventory. His note:

We also note the large increase in advertising on YouTube, which we estimate currently has approximately 9% ad coverage and which we believe could rise to 15% within the next 12 months as more professionally-produced content and movies are added to the Web property. We understand that Google is currently exploring new payment mechanisms–micro-payments and subscriptions to expand YouTube’s business model. Although YouTube revenues are likely to be small through the end of 2009 (we estimate $123 million), we think the increased ad coverage will place YouTube in a favorable position when CPMs eventually start to recover in 2010 and beyond. Our 2010 forecast for YouTube revenues of $222 million represents 81% growth over 2009.

Then again, YouTube still has a very long way to go. Look at the most popular clips on the site today and you’ll find a whole lot of video from this week’s Barcelona-Chelsea Champions League match, all of which seem to be copyright violations, which makes them toxic to advertisers.

Here are four examples from the same game. Note that all of them seem to have been up on the site for at least a day:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090508/youtube-may-be-solving-its-ad-problem-slowly/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090221/walt-and-katie-report-from-the-mobile-world-congress-in-barcelona/ http://allthingsd.com/20090221/walt-and-katie-report-from-the-mobile-world-congress-in-barcelona/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:00:56 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/?p=229 Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret were at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, and sent back this report on some of the highlights of the show.

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090221/walt-and-katie-report-from-the-mobile-world-congress-in-barcelona/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20090217/why-so-sirius/ http://allthingsd.com/20090217/why-so-sirius/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:25:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=13087

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090217/why-so-sirius/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070910/ddv20070910/ http://allthingsd.com/20070910/ddv20070910/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:00:57 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070910/ddv20070910/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070910/ddv20070910/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070910/amd-barcelona/ http://allthingsd.com/20070910/amd-barcelona/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:01:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070910/amd-barcelona/ It’s slower than initial expectations and about six months later than originally promised, but Advanced Micro Devices’ quad-core Opteron (Barcelona) processor is still a milestone for the company and perhaps an antidote for its sagging financial fortunes.

The new server chip, which puts four processors on a single silicon die, is the first of its kind and AMD’s shot at regaining some of the market its lost to a resurgent Intel. The company’s market share was about 25% in the middle of 2006. By mid-2007, it had slipped to close to 13%. “There is nothing that we would have been more excited about than getting it out earlier,” AMD CEO Hector Ruiz told eWeek. “But you know we are not making excuses. This is a damn difficult thing to do, as I’m sure you can imagine. …This is 600 million transistors on a chip, four cores, complex technology and tremendous architectural features. It was, frankly, a little tougher challenge than we had anticipated and it frustrated the hell out of us because we wanted to get it out there earlier.”

Of course you did. The Quad-Core AMD Opteron arrives at market nearly a year after Intel began shipping quad-core processors of its own and follows a string of consecutive quarterly losses. The stakes here have been high for quite a while. But is the quad-core Opteron the winning hand for which AMD hopes? Perhaps. Perhaps not. “Barcelona is not the sweeping challenge to Intel they wanted to make,” analyst Rob Enderle told the Austin American Statesman. “This keeps them in the game and competing. But it’s not a leadership position.”

Certainly, Intel doesn’t think so. This morning the company announced that it now expects third quarter revenue to be between $9.4 billion and $9.8 billion, improving on its previous guidance of $9 billion to $9.6 billion.

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