There are three new members of the Droid family of Android-running smartphones, all of them carrying the long-established Motorola brand name Razr. The name was one of many bits of the Motorola legacy in sight today as CEO Dennis Woodside, introduced first by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, declared that today was the “first day of the new Motorola.”

In its newness, it seems to be looking to draw strength from the old Motorola. Example one: Martin Cooper, the inventor for Motorola of the original handheld cellular phone — the same guy who in 1973 became famous for a PR stunt in which he wirelessly called rivals at Bell Labs in front of reporters assembled outside the New York Hilton — sat in the front row. Example two: Jim Wicks, the legendary head of Motorola’s design shop and the man who led the team that designed the original Razr that sold more than 130 million units and became the best-selling clamshell phone in history was also on hand. So no matter how you slice it, the new Motorola looks a lot like the old Motorola.

AllThingsD’s Lauren Goode and I sat down with Woodside after Motorola’s announcements today at New York’s Gotham Hall to talk about how the news fit into his longer-term vision for the company. My first question was about his reaction to today’s other downtown mobile event.

AllThingsD: I spent the earlier part of the day at Nokia’s big Lumia launch event with Microsoft. Nokia says its big differentiating factor is going to be photography. What will be Motorola’s?

Well, I think you saw the story today. We think speed and the focus on it really does matter. And getting LTE right is really hard. We’ve been at it for a while. There are lots of things you do with a device to make it run in a power-efficient manner that are not trivial. The last generation of the Maxx we’ve shown that we know how to do that. Another point is the design element, and the screens in particular. The edge-to-edge screen is also hard to get right. If you do it wrong the glass can break. A lot of people don’t want to compromise on the screen size. But they don’t want to haul around a large device.

So technically how did you fit a larger battery into something that slim with an enhanced display?

That is a strength of Motorola’s. We’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time. Jim Wicks, our senior vice president in charge of design, is here, and his team has been working getting as much as you can into as thin a device as possible. If you took these phones apart, there are hundreds of pieces that fit together like an incredible jigsaw puzzle. So it’s actually really hard, but something we do really well.

A lot of people were wondering if we might see a tablet from you today …

Not today, but we have some tablets in the market that have done reasonably well, but clearly we have aspirations to be a bigger player in that part of the market. I don’t have anything to say today, but stay tuned. It’s certainly an area we’ll be investing in.

If you could change something about, say, the Xoom tablet, what would it be? What would you focus on first?

A couple things. When the Xoom first came out, the state of Android was very different from what it is today. The content wasn’t the same. The function of Google Play. Going forward, the content story has to be very strong, and I think Google is focused on that. I think also price makes a huge different. One of the reasons we brought in Mark Randall from Amazon’s Lab126 is that price matters to consumers, especially in the tablet space.

Talk about the broader vision for Motorola now that it’s part of Google. What is it?

Motorola is going to be an innovator in Android hardware. And we’re starting with the devices that you see today. But these have been in the pipeline well before Google acquired the company. We were able to make some tweaks, but the teams are working on the next generation of devices.

What does Google bring to the table for you at Motorola?

First, a long-term mindset and a conviction. Look at past acquisitions. Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube in 2005, and a lot of people thought that wasn’t a good acquisition. And we spent a lot of time helping that business scale and build the business relationships it needed to survive. And now it’s an integral part of so many things. All the presidential election speeches are on it. It forms a fundamental part of how people engage with video around the world. That makes it a huge value. What’s it worth? It’s hard to know. But the point is that Google took a long-term perspective with it. It’s about having a long-term plan and then driving against a long-term technical vision that benefits consumers. For Motorola it’s that long-term mindset, and the long-term bet on mobility. That’s hugely valuable.

Does that long-term strategy include set-top boxes?

It’s a completely different business. It’s called the home division and it reports to me, but that is a radically different business. The mobile device business is inherently a consumer business with carriers as our partners. The set-top box business has a very different set of partners and consumers don’t usually choose their set-top boxes in those markets. It’s a completely different business and we run it separately.

Are you going to keep it?

We haven’t talked about any of our plans long-term for that business.

Five years out, do you see Motorola as a broad-based handset maker or do you think people will look at it as Google’s hardware division?

You have to look at how consumers are going to behave in five years. Look back five years ago. The iPhone had just come out and a lot of people had feature phones or maybe a BlackBerry. Five years from now the form factors are going to change radically. And the consumer is going to be thinking about wearables and tablets. They’ll still make phone calls, but I don’t know if the phone is going to look like it does now. But the device, the hardware that allows you to communicate and get on the Web in a mobile way is something that Motorola really does well.

Samsung sold 90.43 million mobile handsets in the second quarter, giving the South Korean consumer electronics powerhouse a 21.6 percent market share, up from 20.7 percent in the first quarter this year and up from 16.3 percent the same quarter a year ago, Gartner’s figures showed.

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Here’s the good news: The nearly-new board of Yahoo is chock-full of experienced and active operators from a variety of backgrounds that are critical to the future of the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

And the bad news? The nearly-new board of Yahoo is chock-full of experienced and active operators from a variety of backgrounds that are critical to the future of the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

In others words, in almost completely upending its director roster over the last several months, Yahoo has given itself a new lease on life, but has also created a significant challenge in forming a cohesive governing structure that can work together in fixing all that ails Yahoo.

Among the important decisions that this new boy band — and they are, as usual, all men save for one woman — has to come to agreement on within the next months: Settling its patent-infringement lawsuit with Facebook; deciding on a permanent CEO — either selecting current interim leader Ross Levinsohn as permanent or someone else; approving a strategic plan for the company that actually sticks; and, most of all, figuring out a governance style that is strong without being too meddlesome.

Which should make Yahoo’s annual meeting on July 12 much more interesting than most.

One thing is clear: The days of overwhelming control in the hands of a few directors — as has been the case in recent years under departed Chairman Roy Bostock — are over.

In its place is a situation with a number of strong factions under new Chairman Fred Amoroso, who appears to have taken a consensus approach to managing the board.

It’s not as if he had a whole lot of choices, said numerous sources, especially noting the aggressive involvement of activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point — who joined the board with two others in the settlement of a proxy fight — in all aspects of Yahoo of late.

Along with helping finally complete a partial sale of Yahoo’s assets in China, Loeb has also be active in discussions with Facebook over a patent settlement, and has also been searching for new board members and possible new execs for Yahoo.

“Dan has a lot of ideas,” said one person close to the situation, “and he is not shy about communicating them.”

To be fair, it’s a welcome change from the lackluster performance of the previous board, which seemed almost comatose at times as Yahoo pinged from one crisis to the next.

And Loeb is also joined by several other directors who are taking a more substantive role, including Weather Channel CEO David Kenny, American Express CMO John Hayes and former Discovery Communications COO Peter Liguori.

“Every one of them has a lot to say and has definite opinions on what needs to be done, since most have run major businesses,” said another Yahoo source. “Which either means 11 times the noise, or 11 times the help.”

Or, perhaps, 11 times the fun (but only for me).

Speaking of fun, here’s the comely One Direction showing how it’s done, in the music video “What Makes You Beautiful”:

The deal was a surprise when announced eight months ago but has been a looming reality in recent weeks as the companies received the regulatory nod in one jurisdiction after another.

Motorola said in a regulatory filing Monday that it expects the deal to close by Wednesday, but it looks like it will be sooner than that. S&P’s stock index unit said Monday afternoon that it expects the deal to close before the start of regular trading on Tuesday morning. S&P needs to know these things, of course, because Motorola is part of the S&P 500, at least until Thursday when it will be replaced by Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Google was not immediately available for comment.

The deal’s closure was all but inevitable after Chinese antitrust authorities cleared it over the weekend. China was the last roadblock on Google’s eight-month road to regulatory approval, with the deal having already been approved by regulators in the European Union and the U.S. in February.

It’s a deal that has raised some hackles in the process, as Google could potentially play favorites with Motorola by giving early data on the Android operating system to Motorola, one of Google’s many licensed Android handset manufacturing partners. Ostensibly, companies like HTC, Samsung and LG could lose their competitive edge if Google were to give Moto the inside track.

But Google has vehemently denied any notions of favoritism since first announcing the acquisition, stressing that Motorola will continue to be run as a separate business.

That may be more likely after China’s blessing of the deal, considering that it was contingent upon Google keeping Android open to all partner manufacturers for the next five years. That’s especially helpful for Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE, both of which have placed big bets on Android.

At the initial acquisition announcement, Google said — and continues to maintain — that the buy was strictly a patent play, a move that in CEO Larry Page’s words would “enable [Google] to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”

According to the latest metrics from Gartner — which measure sales of handsets to customers, not shipments into the channel — Samsung sold 86.6 million mobile phones in the first quarter, 25.9 percent more than it sold during the same period a year ago. That was enough to give it a 20.7 percent share of the market, and to seize the title of “world’s largest mobile handset vendor” from Nokia, which sold 83.2 million cellphones during the quarter, as its market share slipped to 19.8 percent from 25.1 percent a year ago.

Unfortunate news for Nokia, which had been the market’s leader since 1998, but inevitable given the company’s recent decline and, perhaps, its choice of Windows Phone as an OS for its newest handsets.

Because what’s driving Samsung’s growth is Android. According to Gartner’s sales data, Samsung was by far the largest Android smartphone vendor, claiming nearly 44 percent of Android-based smartphone sales. Interestingly, no other Android phone manufacturer captured more than 10 percent of the market.

So, if Samsung commandeered the handset market’s top spot in the first quarter, and Nokia its second, who claimed third? Apple, which sold enough iPhones to capture 7.9 percent of the total mobile phone market.

As for mobile OS market share, Android continues to rule the market — 56 percent of smartphones sold to end users globally in the first quarter of 2012 run the OS, far more than the 22.9 percent running Apple’s iOS.

This according to research outfit Strategy Analytics, which predicts LTE phone shipments will spike to 67 million this year.

Now, a nearly tenfold increase over the course of a year might seem like a stretch, but with big carriers in the U.S., Japan and South Korea aggressively expanding their LTE networks, and handset manufacturers beginning to pump out devices to take advantage of them — HTC, Samsung and, soon, Apple — Strategy Analytics believes there will be a huge upswell in adoption.

Said Neil Mawston, the firm’s executive director, “[2012 will be a ] breakout year for 4G LTE technology.”

We’re also waiting on any further color that comes from Verizon’s wireless business on the number of iPhone 4S units sold so far. AT&T revealed that it had sold one million as of Tuesday. Verizon provided indication of how well its iPhone 4S sales are going, but said it sold two million older iPhones during the quarter. All that and more you can find in my notes from the conference call, below:

5:27 am: So I never thought I would miss the annoying light-FM music that plays before other earnings calls. But I am. I’m hearing Verizon Wireless radio ads instead.

Anyway, good morning from New York. The conference call is due to start in less than two minutes.

Here are a few things I’m pulling from the slide presentation. Verizon sold 5.6 million smartphones in the quarter. No word yet on the iPhone versus Android versus BlackBerry mix. Perhaps there will be some color on that during the call.

Also, 1.4 million LTE devices were sold, and 39 percent of its subscriber base uses smartphones.

All that explains the 20 percent surge in data revenue.

Okay, the call is under way.

5:33 am: Some other things from the presentation: FiOS amounts to 59 percent of consumer revenue. There are now four million FiOS subscribers, up by 131,000 subscribers.

5:34 am: Here’s the result: 49 cents per share EPS, a doubling of EPS over the year ago.

And now we have CFO Fran Shammo. Solid execution and earnings performance. Would have been better had it not been for the hurricane and that strike. Tough quarter.

A 2.6 percent dividend increase pushes it to $2 a share. It’s the fifth consecutive year the board has authorized a dividend boost.

Increasing customer demand for smartphones, tablets and Internet devices. (Tell me something I didn’t know.)

Shammo: Naming off some enterprise customers and mentioning Terremark and CloudSwitch, two companies it acquired in recent months.

Hurricane caused severe troubles in wireless business. That and the strike created a severe backlog in the FiOS business. This hurt the EBITDA margin by 250 basis points. Still, the overall wireline revenue mix increased.

5:39 am: $27.9 billion in consolidated revenue.

49 cents in EPS includes seven cents of adjustments from the storms and strikes.

Cash flow: FCF up $1.9 billion to $5.1 billion. Capex was $3.6 billion slower sequentially. $1.8 billion of that was in wireless.

Second-half spending will be lower than in the first half. 4G service is in 165 markets.

186 million 4G pops.

Wireless business: An impressive quarter. Highest retail service revenue growth since 2009, up 6.9 percent. $17.7 billion, up 9 percent year on year. Retail up 6.9 percent.

Total data revenue was 6.1 billion, and amounts to 40 percent of wireless revenue.

Retail wireless customer growth up 8.6 percent.

$50 unlimited plan will help retail prepaid presence.

Again with blaming anticipation of the iPhone 4S for slower than expected customer adds.

Churn metrics .94 percent. (That’s lower than AT&T, for sure.)

Two million iPhones sold during the quarter.

Sold 1.4 million 4G LTE phones.

Internet device ARPU is $49. (What do you know — that’s exactly what I pay every month for my Mi-Fi service.)

I missed a key metric from a little earlier: Shammo said that about half of smartphones were Android phones.

Margins in wireless are going up. EBITDA margin was 48.7 percent, up from 45.4 percent.

Now on to the wireline business.

Total wireline revenue was steady at $10.1 billion. Down slightly, both year on year and sequentially.

5:50 am: Storms and strike cost $250 million in the quarter on the top line. Consumer was $3.4 billion.

FiOS Internet subscribers to 4.6 million, 35 percent penetration of homes open for sale. 8.6 million broadband connections.

Addition of Terremark, the hosting company Verizon bought earlier this year, added $100 million in revenue.

Some changes in pricing to voice packages on the wireline business affected revenue by about $90 million year over year.

Summing up and getting ready for Q&A section.

5:55 am: And here’s the Q&A.

Question about subscriber adds on the retail side in wireless, and then margin pressure in the wireline business.

Shammo: The retail service revenue and the retail post paid from 6.2 to 7.2. I said we were on a glide path to accelerate our ARPU growth, and I continue to see that. We had a $61 million decline. It had to do with AllTel traffic moving off our networks.

Shammo: When you consider the storms and the backlog that we have on the FiOS side and the enterprise side, we will increase the margin. There will be an echo effect in booking that revenue. Terremark had an outstanding quarter. That will flow into the fourth quarter. We started to recover from the storm in the final weeks of the third quarter. Starting to eat into the backlog. It’s about how quickly we can get there.

Question from UBS: Give us more detail on five cents of storm-related costs. More expenses in Q4?

Shammo: As you know, this was an unprecedented storm. There was damage to network facilities. We had 4,000 poles down, damaged countless cables, 820,000 more dispatches in our core, 254 (?) central offices running on generators. The team has done a great job getting this back to normal. We recovered late in the quarter, but there will be a trickle into fourth quarter.

Question from J.P. Morgan: With wireline margins dragging a bit and wireless margins probably down in the fourth quarter, what to expect? Also, what are you seeing from customers, given the economy?

Shammo: Overall, from an economic perspective, we are seeing some impact. The start-ups have not been created from an economic standpoint. In the enterprise, first and second quarter, we showed growth without Terremark. I think we’ll improve in the fourth quarter; from an overall enterprise perspective, it’s all about cloud services. Overall on EPS, given this event in Q3, we will hit our guidance.

Question from Morgan Stanley: Update on labor negotiations? What might impact be on fourth quarter, given that?

Shammo: We continue to speak to the union. We said this would be a marathon, not a quick negotiation. We need cost-structural change. It is not sustainable with 100 percent benefits and 100 percent pensions. On the fourth-quarter charge, it’s too early to tell.

6:05 am: Question from Wells Fargo: We’ve all seen iPhone 4S from AT&T. But as we look at the next generation of the device, you have a clear opportunity for upgrades.

Shammo: We’re extremely pleased. We ran out the first day. We continue to be on allocation from Apple. Not going to get into volumes. (No number!) The ratio of upgrade and new has not changed pre- and post-launch. Third-quarter performance will continue. From an overall device perspective, the lead we have in LTE is unsurpassed by any competitor. More 4G this quarter than last quarter. If you look at Internet devices, 95 percent are 4G LTE. High-end users are moving to 4G.

6:11 am: Question from Bank of America: Are you able to comment at this stage of the game on any impact stemming from this intercarrier compensation refresh? Second: You called out the AllTel roaming impact. What’s your impact from Sprint?

Shammo: We are fully supportive of the regulatory change the FCC is heading up. Complete overhaul of universal service subsidy, we are all in favor of that. We have been a leader in the intercarrier comp; from a benefit standpoint, we are a net payer, but there will also be some put-and-takes in our portfolio. We’ll share them later.

The impact of Sprint is now near the numbers being reported. Our revenue from Sprint for roaming is not material.

6:17 am: Question from Nomura: AT&T is out with iPhone 3GS for free and lower-priced iPhone 4. Any comment about competitive landscape with that? What is the behavior of those customers with the iPhone 4?

Shammo: As we have said, when we compete, we outperform the industry. When we compete head to head, we win that competition. The other thing is that when you look at the net adds, as far as 4 and 4S, the 4 can be upgraded to 95 percent of the features.

Question from Piper Jaffray about upgrade rates. And another about prepaid versus postpaid.

Shammo: The upgrade rate is steady, but was down in anticipation of the new iPhone. We eliminated the New Every Two program, but we haven’t seen much of a benefit yet. We’ll see that financial benefit next year.

6:22 am: Question from Credit Suisse: Are we looking for $9.6 billion in Capex this year? And where does that go? He’s specifically asking about wireless Capex.

Shammo: The plan for wireless is $8.9 billion on wireless. Nothing on next year.

6:25 am: One more question: BMO Capital asks about FiOS scaling.

Shammo: From an overall perspective, the biggest cost of FiOS is content. The profitability increased. The operating efficiency of FiOS is there. The issue for FiOS is to move people off copper to FiOS.

And that concludes the conference call.

The world’s largest cell-phone company by volume posted a net loss of €68 million ($93.6 million), beating Wall Street expectations of a €321 million loss. Sales dropped 13% to €8.98 billion.

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HTC’s strong results reflect rising demand for smartphones as consumers continue to switch from traditional cellphones to gadgets that allow them to browse the Internet, write emails and watch videos.

The Taiwan-based smartphone maker, which is best known for making phones using Google Inc.’s operating system, has been growing at a rapid clip and is neck-and neck with Nokia Corp. in terms of market capitalization.

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Aghast at the U.S. International Trade Commission’s ruling on its first complaint against Apple, Nokia has filed a second, accusing Apple of infringing its patents “in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, tablets, and computers.”

At issue in the complaint are seven patents that Nokia argues “are now being used by Apple to create key features in its products in the areas of multi-tasking operating systems, data synchronization, positioning, call quality and the use of Bluetooth accessories.” Taken together with the IP cited in Nokia’s previous ITC complaint and related cases in the U.S., U.K., Germany and The Netherlands, the company has nearly four dozen patents in play in its suit against Apple.

“Our latest ITC filing means we now have 46 Nokia patents in suit against Apple, many filed more than 10 years before Apple made its first iPhone,” Paul Melin, Nokia’s VP of intellectual property said in a statement. “Nokia is a leading innovator in technologies needed to build great mobile products and Apple must stop building its products using Nokia’s proprietary innovation.”

Almost sounds like Nokia’s saying it invented the iPhone, doesn’t it? Which is ironic, considering the company is on the record professing its fondness for Apple’s handset.

Asked once about the striking similarities between a touchscreen device it was designing and the iPhone, Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s head of multimedia devices at the time, replied, “If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Nokia Sues Apple
• Did Nokia Sue Apple Before Apple Could Sue Nokia?
• Nokia’s New Focus Is Mobile Services? Sure It’s Not Lawsuits Against Apple?
• Apple Countersues Nokia for Copying iPhone (Plus Disputed Patents and Full Text of Counterclaim)
• ITC Investigating Nokia Over Apple Patent Complaints and Vice Versa
• Nokia Accuses Apple of “Legal Alchemy.” Stops Short of “Chymistry” and “Heresy.”
• Apple Vs. Nokia: The Battle of Britain
• Apple Vs. Nokia: The Battle of Britain II
• ITC: Apple Did Not Infringe Nokia Patents

Nokia has already announced the key piece of its strategy–a shift to Windows Phone for future smartphones. Now the company is set to talk about the financial implications of that and go through the rest of its strategy, which includes a mix of Symbian and even a dash of MeeGo.

The investor event is scheduled to start shortly and due to run until about 2 pm London time. Mobilized will have live coverage, providing our battery holds out. I’ll try to mention only the high points, however. Mobilized loves numbers, but it is awfully early for a whole lot of financial speak, especially for the U.S. insomniacs tuning in.

12:02 pm: Still waiting for things to get going. But if you really want something to do, we have plenty of earlier coverage, including the press conference and the YouTube video of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, as well as a chat with Elop on how he made his big decision.

12:05 pm: Okay, things are getting going as Elop takes the stage (the same one as the earlier press conference.

12:06 pm: Elop is reviewing things. Lots of talk of both challenges and gems. If you read his memo, or anything else he’s said recently, you have heard this.

Battle of devices to war of ecosystems, etc. Mobilized has this part memorized.

12:09 pm: Smartphone strategy is just one piece.

Reviewing the three alternatives that Elop considered–MeeGo, Android or some partnership with Microsoft.

As for Google, Elop says it is the case there are some advantages for that approach.

“There’s something happening there. There’s no denying that.”

However, Elop says the company was worried it would be late and be just one of many, and was not sure how it could leverage assets like its Navteq location-based services.

“Our sense was differentiation could be a pretty big challenge,” Elop says. “The risk for commoditization would increase dramatically.”

Feels profit would have eventually moved to Google, with handsets becoming a commodity.

“It felt a little bit like giving up and not enough like fighting back,” Elop says.

12:12 pm: As for Microsoft, Elop says both companies are bringing something to the table.

As expected, Elop is characterizing this as more strategic than just taking a license to Windows Phone. Talking about Nokia services like mapping, local advertising and other things that Nokia can bring to the table.

“It’s far more interesting than a simple licensing deal,” Elop says. This was the only strategy that makes it a three horse race with Google and Apple.

Elop says he is convinced that Nokia will be able to differentiate within the Windows Phone ecosystem on a sustainable basis.

12:15 pm: There were some challenges and potential disadvantages, he acknowledges.

Top among these is the fact that Windows Phone 7 is new on the market.

“It’s early,” he says. “Will it succeed?”

12:17 pm: Also, there is the issue of being locked in or a lack of control. Elop does not disclose terms but says the company has flexibility and “substantial control” over the future of the ecosystem.

“This is not your mother’s OEM deal with Microsoft,” Elop says.

12:17 pm: Elop says the deal is at the “term sheet” stage, noting that the companies have yet to sign the “definitive agreement.”

12:18 pm: Already the engineers are working through, and Elop says this deal will allow Nokia to move far faster than it has in recent years.

12:18 pm: He’s also making the cost-saving argument, saying Nokia can focus its investment, which he acknowledges hasn’t been getting the return it should.

Elop earlier acknowledged that the company expects significant cost savings from the move as well as substantial workforce reductions.

“Bottom line: Products that are more competitive,” he says.

12:22 pm: Operators are excited by a third viable option, Elop says.

“A two-horse race is not a satisfactory [situation] for operators,” Elop says.

Elop says that Microsoft-Nokia will be operator-friendly, as compared with Google and Apple.

12:24 pm: Elop talking about differentiation–a key concern of analysts and investors.

Elop talks about Windows Phone as offering differentiation form Apple and Google, but also insisting that Nokia has the assets and business terms it needs to stand out from other Windows Phones. He focuses on camera technologies and “unique relationship.”

Stresses again that this is not a standard handset maker agreement. But he also says that just because Nokia can change lots of things within Windows Phone, doesn’t mean it should.

Nokia, he says, must “resist the temptation to customize just for the sake of customization.”

12:27 pm: Now talking about Symbian. For those that missed it, Elop reiterates this is a transition strategy, but adds that the company still expects to sell 150 million more Symbian devices before that transition is complete.

12:29 pm: Strategy is more than just smartphones. He wants the company to be a leading force in connecting the next billion people to the Internet via phones in emerging markets. “The market for feature phones is pushing down the price curve and that is an opportunity for Nokia.”

Nokia will do incremental work in that area–things like Nokia Money for people that don’t have a bank account or telephone. Another, Nokia Life Tools, helps connect, say, farmers to market information.

This area is still a target for innovation, he says, but it also faces competition from Chinese-made phones based on MediaTek chipsets.

Elop says that the company must also plan for the future so that it can be disruptive down the road. “As they say in Finland, it is time to shoot ahead of the duck,” he says.

That’s where MeeGo comes in–the mobile version of Linux that until recently was seen as Nokia’s future. Nokia said that team will ship a phone later this year and then see where the future is headed.

12:35 pm: Want to point out this New York Times article that said both Google and Microsoft were offering hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering and marketing support in order to woo Nokia.

12:36 pm: Elop now talking about cost cuts, including significant job reductions.

“We are not announcing how many and in what country,” Elop says, but adds that the company wants to move quickly on that front.

He says that he has made changes to the business to ensure speed, including leadership structure changes aimed at ensuring accountability. “If things go well today, I’ll be the CEO.”

Of note, the two of the three business unit leaders are women–Mary McDowell, who will lead lower-end phones, and Jo Harlow, who will head the smartphone business.

12:40 pm: Nokia looking for a new leader for its services and developer division. The acting head is Tero Ojanpera, but he will soon be looking for other opportunities within Nokia, Elop says.

Also of note, Louise Pentland, who is head of the legal and intellectual property unit, is being elevated to the top leadership team.

“We have one of the strongest patent portfolios out there” he says, adding that he would encourage all players to take a license to said patents. (hear that, Apple?)

New leader of North American sales unit to be named in coming days.

“We are creating a different industry,” Elop says in closing his introductory remarks.

12:44 pm: Elop Brings on CFO Timo Ihamuotila to go through the numbers.

12:46 pm: Ihamuotila acknowledged Nokia didn’t meet the targets it had set out to achieve at its last financial analyst day.

“Our execution did not cut it.” he says.

12:49 pm: Ah, Now on to the good stuff. CFO talking financial impact from Microsoft deal. Says should be good over the long term.

Slide shows royalty payments to Microsoft causing lower gross margins, but says sales and marketing support from Microsoft should lower operating expenses.

“We will receive substantial go-to market support from Microsoft,” he says, without giving numbers.

12:52 pm: Ihamuotila talking now about the company’s long-term targets for devices and services period “after the transition period.”

Device sales to grow faster than the market, with operating margins of 10 percent or more–but this is only after the transition period, which the company has said could last this year and next.

Significant uncertainties in this period.

Ihamuotila shows a slide showing Symbian sales slowly giving way to Windows Phone with lower-end mobile phones remaining about half of sales.

12:57 pm: Ihamuotila shows chart of how it expects to cut R&D with the company investing less in services, more in entry-level phones and far less on MeeGo, though still some. The investment in Symbian will be replaced by a far lower investment in Windows Phone R&D. Overall, R&D should be a fraction of what it was.

1:02 pm: Over long term, Ihamuotila says that the Microsoft deal should help significantly boost the company’s Navteq navigation business.

“We think this new strategy is the best way to maximize long-term value, both to our shareholders and to other stakeholders,” Ihamuotila says.

On to Q&A for financial analysts.

1:03 pm: Question on how Nokia will keep employees motivated, something else and when to expect the first Windows Phone.

“Thanks for the one question” Elop quips, before addressing them in turn.

Elop says that the key is on focused innovation so they see the fresh opportunities (at least for the ones who don’t get cut by the large workforce reductions also promised).

He also pointed to his sharply worded memo, which he said was designed to convey the message that “Here is the truth, we’re making decisions and we’re moving forward.”

Won’t give date on first Windows Phone, but says again that the move will allow a substantially faster pace than the company was on with Symbian.

1:07 pm: Elop is asked about some of the challenges with Microsoft and Nokia each responsible for different pieces of software and services, as opposed to Google and Apple, where things are more integrated.

“We wanted to drive operational simplicity,” Elop says, adding that the companies talked about other arrangements, though not a full-on acquisition. The companies, Elop says, decided not to go with the operational complexity of a joint venture.

1:10 pm: Elop says Nokia has opportunities to differentiate from other Windows Phone devices, but adds it is in Nokia’s interest for there to be other strong handset players supporting Windows Phone.

“We’ve got to make Windows Phone successful,” he says.

Nokia’s mapping technology, he says, will benefit rivals like Samsung and HTC. “We’re willing to make those trades,” Elop says.

1:11 pm: Elop is asked why he feels comfortable with a “bet the farm” strategy on Microsoft, a company he clearly knows well.

Elop points out that it was harder to see how Microsoft would rapidly be successful without someone like Nokia.

“But this is now different,” he says, adding that this is now an ecosystem that Microsoft and Nokia are jointly helping to build.

Mapping and local advertising were not part of the ecosystem before the Nokia-Microsoft partnership.

As for impact of the transition, it’s hard to say, Elop says. Symbian is strong in some places where Apple and Google are present today.

1:14 pm: Asked whether Nokia will remain profitable during the transition. “It’s hard to say financially, and I am not going to provide any further specific guidance.”

1:17 pm: Elop won’t say when the first Windows Phone will ship, but lots and lots by next year at various price points.

“We’ll be shipping in volume in 2012,” he says.

1:20 pm: Another two-parter! 1) Why will Symbian be supported if it is transitioning away? 2) Why does Nokia think it will be able to have double-digit operating margins using someone else’s platform?

Elop: They recognize Symbian is key to Nokia being able to transition, but he agrees that consumers will have to want the Symbian phones Nokia builds. CFO also notes that less than half of Symbian phones are sold through carriers.

As for question on margins, CFO says the company has opportunities for higher margins around services and advertising.

1:23 pm: Asked about how the company is confident Windows Phone can get to lower prices, Elop says that was a key consideration, down to which chipsets will be supported, etc.

Between the two companies there was a lot of work to get a high degree of confidence.

“That was a critical evaluation,” he says.

That said, Elop agrees there is a smartphone market below Windows Phone that Nokia will manage with an evolution of today’s Series 30 and Series 40 operating systems.

1:31 pm: Elop: Some of the hardware designs that would have run MeeGo or Symbian will be repurposed for Windows Phone. Some devices may come out with similar models for both Windows Phone and Symbian.

1:32 pm: Question again on who pays whom in Microsoft-Nokia. Is there a lump payment from Microsoft?

Elop doesn’t answer and instead refers to slide that shows opportunities on both sides. Saying value going both ways. As for Microsoft’s payments, “That is a significant part of the conversation,” Elop says.

1:35 pm: Two good questions: Can Windows Phone be put on any current devices? What happens to QT development layer that Nokia bought and had sought to unify developer approach?

Elop: It’s not as simple as plugging in and downloading on to current phones, though some technologies can be repurposed.

QT continues to be the development for Symbian and lone MeeGo device. Also could have a role on low-end devices.

However, Elop says, “We are not proposing a QT on Windows Phone” approach. Adding another development environment could fork the ecosystem, which is not good for Nokia or Windows Phone, he says. Development environment for Windows Phone will be Silverlight and XNA–Microsoft’s current tools.

1:38 pm: Asked about branding, he says in some cases you will see both Microsoft and Nokia brands. Examples could include Nokia Search powered by Bing or Bing maps powered by Nokia, though he says those are examples and not final choices.

1:39 pm: Asking about tablets, questioner points out that Nokia had an early lead in tablets, but Apple “stole the show.”

“We are not announcing today a specific tablet strategy,” he reiterates, saying that Microsoft creates opportunities.

Elop notes that there are rumors of Windows Phone and Windows that could power tablets.

“We could do that,” he says. “We might do that.”

Also an opportunity for Nokia to step back into the game using its own software.

1:41 pm: Elop wrapping up.

“We have set a new course for Nokia,” he says, adding that despite what has been written, Nokia is still an incredibly powerful company, though perhaps not in North America. “Today we are diving forward” he says. “We have a strong partner in Microsoft who is incented as are we in making this successful.”

Investor guy closes by reminding there were forward-looking statements. He’s still going as people leave the room.

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

• Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talks to Mobilized About the Big Microsoft Deal (Video)
• Massive Layoffs Expected at Nokia
• Nokia’s Microsoft Partnership: Does the New Strategy Add Up?
• Live From the Nokia-Microsoft Press Conference: It’s a Windows Phone World After All
• More From Nokia: Forecast Gets Cloudy, Plus Expected Executive Changes
• Nokia-Microsoft: What Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop Have to Say in Their Joint Letter
• Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership With YouTube Video
• R&D Spending: Nokia Vs. Apple Shows Size Doesn’t Matter
• Not Seeing Much Return on That Massive R&D Spend, Are You, Nokia?
• Nokia: Big and Slow

Nokia spends about five times as much on mobile R&D as Apple. In fact, Nokia has nearly as many engineers working on its smartphone software platforms as Apple does for its entire product line. Says Dediu, “Symbian alone may cost twice as much to develop than the iPhone (including the hardware).”

A shocking metric, if correct. And a pretty dismal return on investment–unless there’s another version of Symbian in the pipeline that will best iOS.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Not Seeing Much Return on That Massive R&D Spend, Are You, Nokia?
• Nokia: Big and Slow

Hamstrung by institutional inefficiencies and the complexity of its legacy platforms, Nokia is spending a lot of money to gain traction in markets in which its handset lineup is clearly uncompetitive, and with little success. Instead it’s suffering steeper share losses at the high end of the market and margin erosion across its entire portfolio. And it’s spending about 4 times as much on R&D as Apple, which has recast the smartphone space from its own vision.

As Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu observes, Nokia’s business appears to be melting like an ice cube. “At this stage, we believe that even a good success of Symbian^3 would barely stabilize the business,” he says. “A real comeback will need much more effort … and a lot more time, unlikely to happen in the next couple of years, in our view.”

So what can be done? Though some observers argue Nokia should scrap Symbian, Ferragu says that’s impossible given the number of assets the company has that depend on it. The company can’t really make a big move to Android, either. That would undermine its current service strategy and alienate partners, European carriers looking for an alternative to iOS and Android, and Nokia’s developer community.

What it should do, he says, is redouble its efforts on MeeGo and make it a viable competitor to Android and iOS in markets like North America, while continuing to push Symbian to the rest of the world. And then it should integrate the two through QT, its cross-platform application and UI framework. Says Ferragu, “By migrating all UI developments of Symbian on QT, the company can generate significant cost savings, progressively drive the platform towards a single UI between MeeGo and Symbian and a single development environment for applications.”

What’s left to do after that?

Hope for the best.

As CEO Stephen Elop said during the company’s last earnings call, “Nokia must compete on ecosystem to ecosystem basis. In addition to great device experiences we must build, catalyse or join a competitive ecosystem. And the ecosystem approach we select must be comprehensive and cover a wide range of utilities and services that customers expect today and anticipate in the future.”

“Whatever the strategy is we outline on Feb. 11, we very clearly ensuring that it will give us the opportunity to reopen markets such as the U.S. and some others, where we have not recently been present.”

A data-service pricing document leaked to Engadget suggests Verizon has scrapped its $15-for-150MB plan, leaving a mandatory $30-per-month unlimited data plan as the sole option for “feature phones and 3G smartphones” like the iPhone. Note the specificity of that designation–it excludes upcoming LTE handsets, which will presumably debut with higher, tiered data-pricing plans.

Meanwhile, rival AT&T continues to offer the iPhone with two capped data plans–200MB for $15 a month, and 2GB for $25.

[Image Credit: Engadget]

That’s changing starting today, as the company begins to stick “pre-roll” ads in front of several thousand of its clips, including a new set of music videos that hasn’t been available for YouTube mobile until now.

YouTube will start running videos from Vevo, the “Hulu for Music” joint venture that it works with. And it will run ads with those clips, as well as a few thousand other clips, primarily from its network of semi-pro “partners.”

The caveats: The music clips will run only on Google’s Android handsets, and not on Apple’s iPhone or any other competitors’ phones. And the clips will be limited to whatever Vevo has available in its catalog. Which means, most notably, that Google won’t be able to show clips from Warner Music Group, since the company still hasn’t come to terms with Vevo.

That doesn’t mean iPhone users have to go without music videos, of course: There’s a Vevo iPhone app, if you’re so inclined, and there’s plenty of other ways to get music videos on your phone if you want or need to. It’s just that Google won’t make any money when you watch them.

The big picture is that YouTube says it is now generating 200 million video views a day from mobile devices (that number includes both phones and tablets like the iPad), up 3x from last year. And now it wants start turning those views into dollars, or at least pennies.

Worth noting that while YouTube has been most aggressive about putting “overlay” ads on the clips it runs on the Web, it’s not doing so here.

That makes sense, because the format would be particularly annoying on a small screen, where the real estate it eats up would be even more noticeable. And because the point of overlay ads is to get a user to click on them, which opens up a new site. That works fine on the Web, but, again, it seems like a very tough sell on a handset.

Skype did not confirm the price, which was rumored to be about $100 million, according to BusinessInsider.com.

Skype said Qik has 60 employees, headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., and has an office in Moscow, Russia, and that it expects to close the transaction later this month.

Qik runs on more than 200 mobile phones, including Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile. It also comes preloaded on a wide variety of mobile handsets through valuable ç it has inked with handset manufacturers and wireless carriers. The partnerships helped rocket Qik’s growth. At the beginning of 2010, Qik had 600,000 users, and it ended the year with five million.

Qik has been trying to position itself as the alternative to Apple’s FaceTime application, which allows people to make video-conferencing calls from their iPhone 4. However, one of the biggest complaints about Qik is lack of integration into a users’ phone book. Presumably, Skype could bring some of that functionality to the table since many users already have built up their address book within their interface.

Skype also mentioned it plans to take advantage of Qik’s engineering expertise for optimizing video transmission over wireless networks. One cool feature that Qik has, and Skype doesn’t, is that it allows people to share videos in real time, and also record and store them to view later.

As I noted yesterday, there are lots of reasons for Qualcomm to want Atheros, not the least of which is its extensive customer list.

Qualcomm’s specialty has always been in CDMA technology, the flavor of mobile phone technology favored by Verizon Wireless and Sprint, and it collects considerable royalties around its patent portfolio there. It has struggled to penetrate other markets, and last year shuttered its FloTV operation amid minimal demand. The good news was that it sold its FloTV spectrum to AT&T for $1.93 billion, which is no doubt offsetting the cost of this deal. Add that to the $10.3 billion in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet as of Sept. 26 and this is an easy deal to do.

It’s also the biggest deal in Qualcomm’s history and the first significant one under CEO Paul Jacobs, who is the son of founder Irwin Jacobs.

Atheros shareholders have plenty of reasons to smile today as well. The company’s stock price surged by 19 percent yesterday. At $45 a share, Qualcomm is paying more than Atheros has ever been worth in its entire history as a publicly held company. As Shira Ovide over at Deal Journal notes, its highest price before yesterday was $43.90. Happy New Year, indeed.

I caught up with Qualcomm Executive Vice President Steve Mollenkopf and Atheros CEO Craig Barratt to talk about the deal.

NewEnterprise: Steve, let’s start with you. What got Qualcomm interested in Atheros?

Mollenkopf: Historically Qualcomm has been focused on the cellular phone, though recently we’ve done much more than that. We had some integration relationships with some companies that allow us to deliver a platform to our customers. They’re essentially technical relationships, and one of those companies was Atheros. So we were familiar with them. But the real reason, the why Atheros and why now question comes down to this. We think the industry is moving to a place where a lot of the technology and use cases that are being created as part of the shift to smartphones will be used outside of just phones, and will move into many adjacent spaces. The requirement of technology and different customers overlap a lot with Atheros. They’re a leader in their space, we’re a leader in ours and we want to go into markets that will require the expertise from both of us. It seemed natural, actually.

Craig, the idea for the acquisition seems to have grown out of an existing partnership. When did the talk turn from being Qualcomm’s partner to becoming part of Qualcomm?

Barratt: The partnership has gone on for about five years, where we’ve cooperated on joint reference and designs and software and feature integration. Over the years we’ve broadened out from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, powerline and optical networking. We do have a much more horizontal business. Qualcomm has a very strong vertical business. Through our partnership we saw the teams had a good cultural fit, the engineering teams really respect each other. When we looked at our own strategic imperatives over the long term, we saw that cellular technologies are going to be applied in a much broader markets over time, beyond just smartphones and tablets. There’s an intersection between the Qualcomm technology and our technology, and that’s only going to increase. You’ve probably heard that set-top boxes and things like that are going to start to run Android. So a lot of these mobile technologies are going to start showing up in things like the connected home. Strategically it all started to make sense.

And what will your new job be at Qualcomm?

Barratt: After the acquisition closes, which should be in the first half of 2011, my role will be president of Qualcomm Networking and Connectivity, reporting to Steve.

Steve, if I’m not mistaken, this is the biggest deal that Qualcomm has ever done.

Mollenkopf: You’re correct. For us on the Qualcomm side this is a big step toward expanding our business beyond our traditional platform business and we’re doing it in a way that is in line with how the industry is changing. A lot of the things we’ve been doing with Atheros are things we’ve already been doing as part of our relationship, so this is a natural next step.

UPDATE: Sirius now confirms the deal. It doesn’t offer up any new details except for this one: The company will now have the ability to transmit Stern’s show to mobile devices. Which would make the company’s mobile apps for, say, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android handsets much more attractive, and that’s a valuable deal point.

Press release:

Howard Stern Signs New Five-Year Contract With SIRIUS XM
Agreement Includes Rights for SIRIUS XM to Transmit Howard Stern’s Programming to Mobile Devices

NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Howard Stern and SIRIUS XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) today announced a new five-year agreement. The news was first reported by Howard during his show this morning.

“On my first day in satellite radio SIRIUS had approximately 600,000 subscribers. Today, the two companies have 20 million; and, in my view, we have just scratched the surface of how many people will get on board,” said Howard Stern. “I am especially excited that my show will now be heard through SIRIUS XM on mobile devices. Access to my show on mobile devices will open up additional opportunities for my fans to hear me wherever they are.”

“Howard is a great talent and we are thrilled that he will continue to provoke, engage and entertain on SIRIUS XM. Our agreement is good news on all fronts — it is good for SIRIUS XM subscribers and good for SIRIUS XM stockholders. Howard forever changed radio and was instrumental in putting SIRIUS on the map when he first launched on satellite radio. He is one of the few ‘one-name’ entertainers in the country and our 20 million subscribers are lucky to have him,” said Mel Karmazin, Chief Executive Officer, SIRIUS XM.

The world-renowned Stern is credited with revolutionizing the talk radio format. Known for his large and extremely loyal fan base and for his unequalled ability to migrate fans to other media, Stern has embarked on numerous highly successful ventures over the years. Stern has written two best-selling books — Private Parts, which was Simon & Schuster’s fastest-selling book ever, and Miss America, the fastest-selling book in publishing history. He later starred in the highly successful motion picture adaptation of Private Parts, orchestrated one of the fastest-selling soundtracks in motion picture history and has starred in one of the most watched entertainment pay-per-view special of all time.

Howard’s new contract will run through December 31, 2015. Under the terms of the new contract, SIRIUS XM will now have the right to transmit Howard’s exclusive programming to mobile devices. Additional terms of the contract will not be disclosed.

A small but brilliant acquisition that should give RIM some much-needed UI design heft as it further polishes its PlayBook tablet and whatever other next-gen QNX-based smartphones it has in the pipeline. For RIM, whose devices have seemed perpetually a generation behind the latest iPhone and Android handsets, TAT’s acumen could be just the thing to strengthen its competitive position and further the efforts of Don Lindsay, its new VP of User Experience (a former Microsoft and Apple hire)–assuming RIM’s willing to take some guidance.

According to October 2010 figures from research company Nielsen, the iPhone is now tied with the BlackBerry as the most popular smartphone in the U.S. with 27 percent of the market each (Android devices claim nearly 23 percent and Windows Mobile 14 percent). But the iPhone is also the most desired device among likely smartphone upgraders in the U.S., ahead of Android. Among users planning to buy a new smartphone, 35 percent chose the iPhone, while 28 percent chose Android.

One last interesting data point: Nielsen found that men prefer Android over iOS (33 percent vs. 29 percent), while women tend to gravitate toward iOS (31 percent vs. 23 percent).

Insert your own stereotype-based jokes here.

State-owned China Mobile, which had about 570 million subscriber accounts as of September, has long been China’s preferred carrier. But the company’s subscriber growth has slowed as the government has rolled out efforts to restructure the industry and make it more competitive.

The most recent move may provide a boost for China’s two other carriers, which are also state-owned: China Unicom, which had about 160 million subscriber accounts as of September, and China Telecom, which had about 86 million mobile subscriber accounts as of October. China Unicom has been hoping to make the most of some competitive advantages, including its license to operate a mobile network using WCDMA third-generation technology, which is compatible with in-demand handsets like Apple’s iPhone.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

For the three months ended in September, Reasearch in Motion’s BlackBerry remained the leader in the U.S. with 37.3 percent of the smartphone market. But that share was down 2.6 percent from the previous period. Apple followed RIM with a 24.3 percent share, unchanged from its last ranking. Microsoft’s share fell to 10 percent from 12.8 percent and HP/Palm’s to 4.2 percent from 4.7.

Meanwhile, Android gained 6.5 percentage points to capture 21.4 percent of the market, which means Google’s mobile OS now reaches one in five U.S. smartphone subscribers.

Clearly, Google’s strategy of flooding the market with multiple handsets on multiple carriers at a wide range of price points continues to pay off.

The consumer research group says that Google’s software was installed on 44 percent of mobile handsets sold in Q3, up 11 points since Q2. While that data may rile up Apple fans, Android’s gain seems to be primarily fueled by BlackBerry’s loss: Research in Motion lost six points in the last quarter, falling to 22 percent, while Apple’s iOS moved up one point, to 23 percent.

The year-over-year data is more dramatic: It shows BlackBerry’s market share dropping dramatically, and Apple’s less so.

The consolation prize for Apple and RIM is that they had the most-popular individual phone models in the quarter: NPD says the iPhone 4 and the Curve 8500 took the number one and two spots, respectively.

So how did Android gain share? Because it’s on so many other new phones. Canned quote from NPD’s Ross Rubin: “The HTC EVO 4G, Motorola Droid X, and other new high-end Android devices have been gaining momentum at carriers that traditionally have been strong RIM distributors, and the recent introduction of the BlackBerry Torch has done little to stem the tide.”

“Google’s alarming admission last week–confirming it collected entire emails and passwords–only heightened our concerns about how and why this data was collected,” Blumenthal said, adding that he’d rather not “rely on Google’s explanations and assurances…to confirm the facts about how this happened and how consumers will be protected going forward.”

A wise move, I think, particularly given the way Google’s narrative for this particular cock-up has evolved over the past few months, from an outright denial in April to a backpedaling, embarrassing admission in May and finally an apology in October.

In April, an outright denial:

Writing in Google’s European Public Policy blog, Peter Fleischer, the company’s global privacy counsel, denies there was a privacy issue with Google’s Wi-Fi data collection practices. “Google does not store or collect payload data,” he says.

Google product manager Raphael Leiteritz reiterates this assertion in the company’s Submission to Data Protection Authorities that same day. “All data payload from data frames are discarded, so Google never collects the content of any communications,” he writes.

In an interview with the New York Times a few days later, Google spokesman Kay Oberbeck dismisses the privacy concerns of German officials, saying: “What we are doing is totally legal and is being done by other companies around the world….We did not mention the WLAN project during our discussions with data protection officials because it is not related to Street View.”

In May, an embarrassing admission…

Writing in Google’s official blog two weeks later, Google SVP Alan Eustace reveals that the company actually had been collecting payload data. “It’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e., non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks,” he explains. “So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake.” Then there was this from Peter Barron, Google’s director of communications for Northern and Central Europe: “We didn’t want to collect this data in the first place and we would like to destroy it as soon as possible.”

…followed by some aggressive damage control and a downplaying of the issue:

Speaking at Google’s annual Zeitgeist Europe forum, Google CEO Eric Schmidt describes the payload data collected as inconsequential and excuses the company for its misstep, saying, “There was no harm, no foul.”

In June, an unsettling hypothesis:

Apologizing for the company’s mistaken collection of user data, a Google New Zealand spokesperson tells the Otago Daily Times that the information the company’s Street View cars intercepted might not have been as inconsequential as Schmidt claimed. “Our in-car WiFi equipment automatically changes channels five times a second,” she says. “That said, it’s possible that the fragments of data we collected could contain entire emails or other content if a user broadcast personal information over an open network at that moment.”

In October, some hard evidence, another embarrassing admission and a change of tack…

A few months pass, and then a Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s investigation reveals “that Google did capture personal information–and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete emails.” Interestingly, in its report on the matter, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s office notes that while Google “does not intend to resume collection of Wi-Fi data through its Street View cars…[it does intend to] rely on its users’ handsets to collect the information on the location of Wi-Fi networks that it needs for its location-based services database.”

And then the Schmidtstorm:

Appearing on CNN’s “Parker Spitzer,” Google CEO Schmidt cavalierly suggests that folks worried about Google Street View invading their privacy should “just move.” Ironically, he says this on the very day that Google admits those cars captured more than just fragments of personal payload data and says it is “mortified by what happened.”

Schmidt apologizes for his remark the next day:

“As you can see from the unedited interview, my comments were made during a fairly long back and forth on privacy,” he says. “I clearly misspoke. If you are worried about Street View and want your house removed please contact Google and we will remove it.”

And a day later the FTC announces that it has concluded its inquiry into Google Street View, saying the improvements Google has made to its internal privacy practices have alleviated its concerns for consumer safety.

Meanwhile, Blumenthal’s investigation continues.