“I hope at some time in the future they will be [willing] to choose Android again,” Schmidt said in a roundtable discussion with a small group of reporters following his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Schmidt said that he and Android chief Andy Rubin had talked quite a bit with Nokia and that the company understood its operating system well, but declined to say how advanced the talks with his company had gotten. “We did talk to them,” he said. “I would rather not go into the details.”

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told Mobilized on Tuesday that Microsoft will pay billions of dollars for the right to have the company cast the “swing vote” in favor of Windows Phone 7.

Asked whether he agreed that the Nokia-Microsoft partnership makes the smartphone business a three-horse race, Schmidt said, “They’ll have to deliver.”

Separately, Schmidt said regarding near-field communications that Google intends to build a business, but won’t be getting into the credit card or terminal business, but is interested in delivering offers to NFC-equipped devices.

He also reiterated that the company isn’t looking to get into the media business.

“It’s important not to get into businesses you don’t understand,” Schmidt said.

Rubin did say that, having gotten into the business of selling apps, Google is also exploring what other kinds of digital goods it might sell, but had no comment on whether it would sell music or publications.

Asked by Mobilized whether the company needs to do more on the social front, Schmidt said that the company isn’t as interested in building products to compete with Facebook as it is to have the social signals it needs in its core products. However, he said that the Facebook “Like” button or something akin to it is important because what you and your friends like is a key to delivering personalized search results.

On the EU front, Schmidt said that company has had some conversations with regulators and looks forward to more in order to address any concerns.

“Computers are really here to make us happier,” Schmidt said, promising these devices will give people more time with friends and family, not less.

Schmidt, who gave up the CEO role last month, said that nearly all devices will get more interesting when they connect to the Internet. A music player that doesn’t connect to the network isn’t very interesting, he said, perhaps opening the door to the announcement of a long-talked-about, cloud-based Google music service.

The talk is just geting started. Mobilized got a really good seat in the front row, just two seats over from Andy Rubin, and has live updates below.

5:59 pm: Schmidt talking about things phones should be able to do, such as figure out better traffic routes and bridge language barriers. “You really can do magic,” he says, pointing to Google Translate, which lets you speak one language and have a language you don’t speak returned. “That’s done in a twentieth of a second or what have you,” he says.

6:01 pm: Brings out colleague to show an application on “an interesting new device.”

6:03 pm: The device is the Motorola Xoom tablet and the program is “Movie Studio,” an app built from the ground up for creating and editing movies on tablets.

He has a few images and videos from around Barcelona.

He creates a movie onstage and shows how it can easily be shared on YouTube. (This looks like iMovie and Windows Live Movie Maker so far–both of which also let you edit movies and share directly to YouTube.)

6:07 pm: Upload goes slowly, though, as Schmidt notes it is the problem of doing a demo at a mobile network convention where everyone is hammering the networks.

6:09 pm: The goal of many of Google’s products, Schmidt says, is to do tasks quickly so that people can get back to being human. “We ultimately believe that speed matters,” Schmidt says. Google Instant, he says, can save two to five seconds per search.

Search is also becoming more personal. With permission, users can get more information. Next up, he says, is autonomous search as information comes up as one walks or drives, and is driven by location.

“That’s just the beginning of a large number of new apps that use that infrastructure to make a big difference,” Schmidt says.

Schmidt says how much info to share will be up to the user, but those that opt in can get much richer results.

There’s also a trend, he says, to returning more structured data, such as travel.

6:12 pm: Stat time: 120 million people using Chrome, up three times from a year ago.

YouTube revenue doubled in 2010. Now just being able to monetize professional content at a rate that starts to make sense for content partners.

6:18 pm: Computer science can help all kinds of things, Schmidt says. With phones and tablets, “You never forget everything” which is precisely what phones are good at.

If you choose, you can remember the hotels you stayed in and the people you met, etc., “Humans forget,” he says.

Computers are also preventing people from ever getting lost. When I was a boy growing up in Europe “I was always lost,” Schmidt says.

Translation may not prevent war, but should at a minimum increase dialogue, Schmidt says.

6:18 pm: “Even better you are never lonely,” he sats, because computers can point you to nearby friends or connect you to distant ones.

You are never bored, Schmidt says. You are never out of ideas because we can always suggest what you can do next.

Other changes, include the self-driving cars that Google has been working on.

“It’s obvious that cars should drive (themselves),” he says, adding that there will be a “kill switch” in case there are bugs. And it will take time, he says.

“This is coming. It will be decades, I suspect–not a year.”

He also says these innovations will scale to the masses.

“It’s a future for the masses, not the elites,” he says.

6:21 pm: With that, on to Q&A.

6:23 pm: Talking about targeted broadcast quality ads as next frontier.

“Who wants to see an ad that is not relavent to them,” Schmidt says. And that leads to revenue, which Schmidt points out is the whole point of advertising in the first place.

6:24 pm: Question on Android fragmentation saying there is frustration among phone makers and developers.

“We hear some of this,” Schmidt says. “You’ve stated the problem more strongly than I would have, but I will take that as feedback.”

6:26 pm: Question about role of Google in financial services.

Schmidt quips that Larry Page and Sergey Brin periodically suggest that Google issue Google Bucks as its own currency, but Schmidt says he always points out the regulatory issues.

On a serious front, he talks about the power of near-field communications as a means to turn real-world transactions into electronic ones.

“In that are very large businesses,” he says.

(Google built NFC into its Nexus S device.)

6:29 pm: Are you interested in Twitter?

“We love Twitter and I like to tweet,” Schmidt says, eliciting laughter from the crowd.

6:31 pm: Why so many operating systems?

Sometimes these things occur because the teams move so quickly, Schmidt says.

People have been asking when Gingerbread and Honeycomb will come together. Schmidt: You can imagine the follow-on release will start with an “I” and be named after a desert and will combine the best of both, Schmidt says.

These releases occur on roughly a six-month cycle, Schmidt says.

6:33 pm: On Chrome OS, Schmidt says there will be an opportunity to merge that with Android over time, but better to wait for the operating systems to mature and a natural time than to push them together too soon.

6:34 pm: On HTML5, Schmidt imagines that some number of years from now, most apps–mobile and desktop–will be running on HTML5.

6:39 pm: Question on Google’s role in health care.

Phone should be able to, at a minimum, carry medical info. Several percent of queries on Google are health-related.

6:42 pm: Is Facebook with its “Like” button a main competitor?

Today our main competitor is Microsoft. Microsoft has a good product in Bing, he says.

“There’s a couple cases where it might be too good. We discussed that in a blog post.”

They have the cash, the scale and the reach to do good and amazing things.

6:44 pm: On Nokia-Microsoft partnership:

“We would have loved it had they chosen Android,” Schmidt says. “That offer remains open.”

Android would have been a good choice for Nokia, he says.

‘We certainly tried” to get them, he says.

6:46 pm: How do you approach the fact that Android going higher and lower in the market?

Schmidt says that the company tries to show the best in its Nexus line, while putting minimum specifications out there to set the bar for what developers can expect.

6:47 pm: Question on why Google is not more broadly used in the education market?

Schmidt says the company has funded a number of YouTube professors. “We’ve not yet come up with the killer [education] app,” he says.

6:49 pm: Asked about Google’s interest in the PC operating system market, Schmidt says that Google’s answer is Chrome OS. Sometime in the spring you will see a series of PC makers come out with Chrome OS devices. However, he adds they won’t run current PC apps, such as Windows apps.

“It does not run any of your current PC applications so you might think about it,” Schmidt said. That said, he adds there are, in most cases, cloud-based options that are roughly equivalent.

6:52 pm: With that, Schmidt wraps up.

“In the U.S., AT&T and HTC are exclusively bringing this unique user experience to the market later this year,” an AT&T representative told Mobilized. However, the carrier said that full device plans have not been finalized.

AT&T has said it plans to offer at least a dozen Android devices this year as part of a major push to feature devices with Google’s operating system. Products announced so far include phones from Samsung and HTC, Motorola’s Xoom tablet and its Atrix smartphone, which can act as a laptop when plugged into a custom dock.

“It goes without saying this is part of our commitment to have the industry’s best Android portfolio this year,” the AT&T spokesman said.

HTC and AT&T aren’t the only ones at Mobile World Congress looking to harness the power of Facebook. INQ Mobile is showing off its cloud line of Android phones, which feature heavy Facebook integration, while Gemalto has a SIM card that features built-in Facebook support.

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.”

At a press conference due to start any minute, the Taiwanese cellphone maker is set to show off a pair of Android phones–the Cha Cha and the Salsa–as well as its first tablet and several other Android devices.

HTC’s move follows that of INQ Mobile, which last week announced two Android models that feature heavy Facebook integration. Gemalto also announced Monday it plans to integrate Facebook into SIM cards, allowing users of low-end phones better access to the social network.

Like many others’ news here at the show, most of HTC’s had leaked out well ahead of the event.

One particularly nice touch–HTC planned ahead and ran Ethernet cables to each seat in the theater. (Unfortunately, Mobilized left the MacBook Air Ethernet adapter back in the apartment.)

Mobilized has live coverage of the event below.

9:58 am: Still waiting for the press conference–which was due to start a half hour ago–to get under way. We do have comfy seats and soothing music, but would have prefereed an extra half hour of sleep.

9:59 am: Apparently all I had to do was complain. Now it’s getting started with CEO Peter Chou taking the stage.

“2011 is going to be an amazing year,” Chou promises.

Some analysts predict smartphones will outsell feature phones, Chou says.

“Features that were once fancy, extra, are now becoming standard,” he says. “‘Nice to have’ is turning into ‘must have.’”

Hardware is important, but so are software and services like Sense and HTCSense.com. Company plans new versions of HTC Sense for phones with keyboards, larger screens, etc.

10:04 am: Some stats from Chou:

25 million smartphones sold last year, more than double the prior year, with revenue up 93 percent.

The company’s global brand awareness reached 50 percent, up from 13 percent a year and a half ago. (Of course, that means half of consumers still don’t know HTC, but a big improvement nonetheless.)

10:05 am: On to 2011: 4G networks will change everything again. HTC Thunderbolt, its first LTE smartphone, shipping this week with Verizon.

10:07 am: Company is announcing five phones today, the most it has ever announced at one time. Chou says.

“I hope you agree it has been worth the wait,” Chou says, bringing out John Wang, HTC’s chief marketing officer.

10:07 am: Talking about HTC Sense. Location-data for 83 countries. HTC spent a year and a half building the maps product. You can preload, so travel won’t cost a fortune in roaming charges.

Weather is another good example, Wang says, where the company aimed not just to provide information, but also offer an emotional experience.

“When it is sunny you almost feel the warmth on your body. When it rains, you almost want to wipe your phone dry.”

10:10 am: First demo fails as video he wants to show won’t play.

“Well, maybe later on,” Wang says, moving on to the new phones.

And another fails as whatever was supposed to happen isn’t happening.

Okay, here we go. HTC Desire S. And, we’ve got some more demo fail going on.

10:12 am: “We apologize for this,” Wang says, annoucing a few-minutes pause.

10:15 am: And we are back, with HTC Desire S, Incredible S and Wildfire S.

Desire S doesn’t have front and back. Machined out of a single block of aluminum. “It feels solid in your hand,” Wang says. Also has full HD video recording.

Wildfire S, smaller and in three colors. “It can almost disappear into your pocket. (Mobilized hates it when that happens. We’ve put two iPod Nanos through the wash.

10:20 am: HTC Incredible S. As you rotate the large Android phone, the icons on the buttons also rotate. 8-megapixel camera, integrated video chat with front-facing camera. “Incredible S combines premium design with premium experience,” Wang says.

So, essentially these are updates to the existing product line.

Next up, the Facebook phones.

10:22 am: There are 500 million Facebook users worldwide, but 200 million check it on their phones. Those users are twice as engaged. Many young people check Facebook right when they wake up with a significant number doing so from their phones before they even wake up, Wang says.

Now showing a video of HTC’s work with Facebook to build the new phones.

10:24 am: Video of Facebook CEO Marc Zuckerberg touting the device.

“A lot has been made about a Facebook phone,” Zuckerberg says, but adds that there will be more than a dozen phones this year with deep social integration. “HTC is doing that here.”

Mobilized is apologizing in advance, but I may not make it through the whole press conference.

10:26 am: The new phones–the Cha Cha (with keyboard) and Salsa (touch-only) both have a dedicated blue Facebook button at the bottom.

10:27 am: Can use button to post updates, but also if taking a picture can use that button to share social network. “When you press this button, the photo is instantly uploaded to Facebook,” Wang says. Button blinks also when reading an article on the Web. Press the Facebook button and it will share that on Facebook. Similar, when you are listening to a song, pressing the button will share that information.

If you hold button down, you check in on Facebook Places.

Both phones also support Facebook messaging and chat.

“We did not just add social networking to the phone,” Wang says.

10:30 am: Bringing up Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya to talk about the partnership.

“I’m just frankly very thrilled we are taking this very important step, which I think will be the first of many,” he says, saying he expects Facebook and HTC to do more things together.

10:32 am: Chou back up, saying he could just stop with five great phones and ensure another great year. But he’s not. There’s a tablet coming.

10:34 am: Chou says the company could have rushed out another “me too” experience, but says that wasn’t what the company wanted to do.

Showing video of how the company came up with its tablet, the HTC Flyer.

10:37 am: Chou holds up the Flyer, then hands things back to Wang. Flyer also has unibody design, which he says makes the tablet feel solid but keeps it lightweight.

HTC wanted it to be comfortable to hold in hand. At 415 grams it is about the same weight as a paperback book.

Here are a few features: 1.5GHz chip, 6-hour battery life, dual cameras, Flash 10 and HTML 5 support, along with new 3-D-based HTC Sense experience.

10:40 am: Also has a stylus–unique among Android tablets–HTC Scribe technology.

Allows you to share things more easily, Wang says. Just scribble “let’s go” on a restaurant Web page and press a button and it is sent.

You can also use it to do audio note taking–a la Livescribe, where notes are synchronized to the audio.

Mobilized has to jam to our next meeting, but I think we have hit the high points.

Qualcomm, for instance, used the Mobile World Congress to describe what may be a high water mark for gigahertz ratings among chips based on the widely used designs from ARM Holdings. But power consumption of future chips–including one discussed in a sneak preview by Intel–may be at least as important in the battle to supply future smartphones and tablet PCs.

Clock speed, measured in gigahertz–billions of cycles per second–is a bit like revolutions per minute, or RPM, in a car; it shows the speed of internal timing pulses in a chip rather than how much computing work gets done.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

“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 more interesting of the updates is the second one–a major release–due later this year. In a Mobile World Congress keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer plans to demo only a couple of features of the release, including improved multitasking, simultaneous game play with an Xbox as well as the addition of the company’s Internet Explorer 9 browser.

An earlier update, now due out by March, brings the long-awaited copy-and-paste features to the operating system as well as some performance tweaks and support for CDMA networks.

Windows Phone unit President Andy Lees told Mobilized that the new release later this year should answer critics who worried that Microsoft wouldn’t be able to innovate fast enough to catch up or leapfrog over features available on rivals such as iPhone and Android.

“Part of what we are doing is sharing technology across the company,” Lees said in an interview. In other examples, Microsoft is showing a demo of how a user on the phone might play a game throwing balls at someone playing with an Xbox or Kinect. Microsoft also plans to allow sharing of Office documents directly between phones, Windows PCs and the cloud-based Windows Live service.

Moving the full IE9 browser over to the phone will allow for hardware acceleration and other features that had not been possible on phones in the past, Lees said. For battery and other reasons, Lees said that the new release won’t support Adobe’s Flash, but Lees said it is not a religious issue for him, and that the company may add such support down the road.

“We’re not allergic to Flash,” Lees said. “It’s not in this update, but we’re not making some particular statement that it will never be there.”

Microsoft also plans to announce that it will integrate Twitter into the People hub in much the same way that the initial release brings in Facebook updates.

The update later this year will be the one adopted by Nokia in its first Windows Phone, Lees said. Nokia announced last week, of course, that it plans to make Windows Phone its primary smartphone operating system going forward.

As for early reaction to the Nokia move, Lees said the response has been positive, both from mobile operators as well as from phone makers, even those that now find themselves with a new competitor.

Lees said that basically all of the companies that make Windows Phone devices also make phones for Android and have plenty of competition there as well. Lees said that, if anything, Nokia’s move could spur some device makers that were on the fence about supporting Windows Phone 7.

“We have had other [phone makers] approach us who were talking to us and have now increased their, should I say, level of focus,” Lees said.

As for Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s comments that the amount of money flowing to Nokia from Microsoft is measured in billions rather than in millions, Lees said that one must consider that the deal includes partnerships around search and services as well as the amount of marketing and other support being directly provided by Microsoft.

“We’re not talking about specifics,” Lees said. “But it’s a sizeable opportunity.”

Update: 4:00 pm Barcelona time: I finally made it in after being stuck in a massive crowd (see image). Ballmer’s keynote is slated to begin shortly and I’ll add live updates shortly.

4:06 pm: Ballmer has taken the stage, talking about rapid pace of change in industry and for Microsoft.

Talks about first update, the copy and paste one, which will come in first two weeks of March.

4:09 pm: Ballmer said most of smartphone competition the same–a “sea of icons” that lead to applications that lead to actions. Windows Phone is easier and simpler, he said. “With Windows Phone it’s easier to see information at a glance,” Ballmer said.

4:12 pm: On to new stuff, in the “near future in 2011, we will bring multitasking to Windows Phones” Ballmer said.

Ballmer is talking IE9. “We need to give people the full Web on their phone, like we do on the PC,” Ballmer said. (Wouldn’t that also include Flash, Mobilized wonders?)

4:15 pm: Apps are great, Ballmer said, but not enough. “It’s often too hard to find what you want when you want it,” he said. That, he said, is why Windows Phone also has task-specific hubs like People, Pictures, Office, Music and Video.

4:16 pm: Interesting note, Ballmer has again touted 93 percent customer satisfaction number, but no new sales figure.

4:19 pm: Windows Phone exec Joe Belfiore comes onstage to demo the new features coming to Windows Phone later this year.

4:26 pm: Both updates will be available for all Windows Phone 7 owners, Belfiore said.

4:30 pm: Belfiore showing an IE9 demo highlighting its hardware acceleration feature. In the demo, Belfiore shows IE9 for Windows Phone allowing 50 fish to rapidly swim around in an aquarium demo. He then shows the same demo on an iPhone 4 with the fish barely swimming.

4:32 pm: A few demoes fail. Streaming video doesn’t work because of connection issues. “This is preliminary not final code,” Belfiore said. “We’ll get all these kinks worked out.”

On to multitasking…

4:36 pm: Press-and-hold back button lets users access the new multitasking and see tiles for recently run apps.

Also shows Slacker playing with other tasks. Until now, only Microsoft’s own Zune could play in the background, not third-party apps.

4:39 pm: Last demo is the Xbox one showing Kinect game being played with the phone. Shows a “tech preview” of Windows Phone being used as a companion in Kinect’s dodgeball/breakout game.

4:42 pm: Ballmer back and talking about the ecosystems and Microsoft’s interaction with device makers and mobile operators as well as growth in the number of mobile apps for Windows Phone 7.

“We’re off to a strong start,” he said. “We know we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Ballmer said the company knows it needs both scale and variety.

4:44 pm: Now he’s talking Microsoft-Nokia deal.

4:47 pm: Ballmer invites out Nokia CEO Stephen Elop,

Elop calls the deal “a natural partnership,” in which Nokia will bring the global reach and scale that Microsoft needs, while giving Nokia a needed in back to the North American market, where it has struggled badly.

Elop repeats now well-worn point that Microsoft-Nokia will offer mobile operators a third viable choice to iPhone and Android.

4:51 pm: Ballmer makes the same point Lees made in our interview, arguing that the Nokia deal will even help other Windows Phone device makers by giving the ecosystem a needed level of scale.

“Today, customers are falling in love with Windows phones,” Ballmer said, adding that the company is investing to further popularize the phone, including new features.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110214/microsoft-to-add-multitasking-internet-explorer-9-to-windows-phone-later-this-year/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110213/qualcomm-aims-to-heat-up-phone-chip-race-with-dual-core-quad-core-chips/ http://allthingsd.com/20110213/qualcomm-aims-to-heat-up-phone-chip-race-with-dual-core-quad-core-chips/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 07:00:42 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4021 While Nvidia scored a lot of tablet and smartphone design wins at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, Qualcomm is hoping to get back into the act, announcing a new series of single-core and dual-core processors with plans to move to a quad-core chip by next year.

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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110213/qualcomm-aims-to-heat-up-phone-chip-race-with-dual-core-quad-core-chips/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110213/exclusive-motorola-mobility-to-acquire-ex-googlers-stealthy-android-for-the-enterprise-startup/ http://allthingsd.com/20110213/exclusive-motorola-mobility-to-acquire-ex-googlers-stealthy-android-for-the-enterprise-startup/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:48:38 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4053 Motorola Mobility plans to announce later on Monday the acquisition of 3LM, a tiny 10-person Mountain View start-up with the little goal of making Android a secure platform for the enterprise.

The company, which is also just on the verge of launching its product, was started by two former Google employees from the Android team. CEO Tom Moss said he and Gaurav Mathur saw a huge opportunity to offer companies the flexibility of Android with the kind of security features companies get with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 6.5.

“This trend of consumerization of IT is really shortsighted,” Moss told Mobilized in an interview on Monday morning. Businesses still want the same things they always have, including high levels of manageability and security. However, the rise of the iPhone and Android with their powerful capabilities have left IT in reactionary mode. “We’re kind of going against the trend but we think it’s the right bet.”

As part of the deal, 3LM will be a wholly owned subsidiary and continue to work with multiple device makers, Moss said. Financial terms were not disclosed. Motorola was one of the companies that 3LM had been working with.

“We didn’t pursue anybody,” he said, noting there were multiple interested parties. “They are the only OEM that is just doing Android, which kind of matches our mojo and our DNA. We really think it is the best platform for enterprise IT.”

As for the acquisition, Moss said he had built a small team that did a lot of product development in a short period of time, but needed to start building up capabilities for sales and support, all of the kinds of things that would have required some sort of financing. “We don’t have to worry abut funding.”

The deal will also help the company get an in with the kind of customers and partners it needs. “It’s hard as a 10-person start-up to be taken seriously, where as if you are Motorola people will at least talk to you.”

Moss said there is a narrow window to shift the trend away from enterprises just “giving up” and allowing all manner of devices onto their network as long as they have secure email. Although that is where things are headed, Moss noted that a lot of businesses still use BlackBerry and even Windows Mobile devices because of their higher security, though clearly that trend is shifting.

“We really want to get that out there before people just give up on security,” he said. “It’s a question of urgency. We wanted to get out there really quick.”

The company, which started last year, has about $1.5 million in seed investment from angel investors and VC firm Accel Partners.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110213/exclusive-motorola-mobility-to-acquire-ex-googlers-stealthy-android-for-the-enterprise-startup/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110213/checking-in-with-foursquares-dennis-crowley-at-mobile-world-congress-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110213/checking-in-with-foursquares-dennis-crowley-at-mobile-world-congress-video/#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:00:32 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3996 Although tens of thousands of people have checked in to Mobile World Congress in recent years using Foursquare, this is the first time that Dennis Crowley has done so.

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/samsung-does-only-the-expected-introduces-galaxy-s-galaxy-tab-sequels-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110213/samsung-does-only-the-expected-introduces-galaxy-s-galaxy-tab-sequels-video/#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:00:22 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4012 Samsung’s press event on Sunday night was one of the more anticipated of the pre-Mobile World Congress festivities, but if you caught any of the leaks, you got the basics of its news.

The company showed off just two products, both sequels to existing models, during a drawn-out two-hour affair at a palace high above the city of Barcelona.

The Galaxy S II adds a brighter 4.3-inch screen, dual core processor and even thinner design to an already popular Android line that has sold more than 10 million devices. It also packs Android version 2.3 Gingerbread, an eight-megapixel rear camera, two-megapixel front-facing camera, 1080p HD video recording ability and an optional Near Field Communications (NFC) chip.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a larger-screen sibling to Samsung’s first Android tablet and adds, among other things, Android version 3.0 Honeycomb. The new tablet is “coming soon,” Samsung said, offering no specifics on stage.

“This is just the beginning,” Samsung mobile communications president J.K. Shin said, adding that the company sees further growth in 2011 for both smartphones and tablets.

The event started with energy as a selection of performers from the Royal Academy of Music played classical music–half on instruments and half on tablets and smartphones. From there, though, Samsung spent more than an hour on the Galaxy S II, talking about every imaginable feature, but not stating when it would be available or how much it might cost. The tablet was introduced a la Steve Jobs as “one more thing” after Samsung feigned ending the event after introducing the phone.

Samsung spent a good deal of time on the business features of the phone, touting VPN, Wi-Fi calling and Web-Ex capabilities provided by Cisco and mobile device management software from Sybase. Adobe was also brought up to talk about the phone’s Flash playback capabilities, which Samsung said will top the performance of any other phone on the market.

Although Samsung claimed the top spot among Android phone suppliers on the back of strong Galaxy sales, it faces continued competition from industry heavyweights including HTC, Sony Ericsson and LG, all of which are planning improvements to their line. Sony Ericsson aims to grab gamers with its Xperia Play model, while HTC is believed to be readying a Facebook-centric model and LG a 3D-capable model.

Here’s a short video of the Samsung Honeycomb tablet in action.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110213/samsung-does-only-the-expected-introduces-galaxy-s-galaxy-tab-sequels-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110213/sony-ericsson-reveals-game-plan-with-xperia-play/ http://allthingsd.com/20110213/sony-ericsson-reveals-game-plan-with-xperia-play/#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:45:00 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2779 The long-rumored PlayStation phone is finally here.

Today, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Sony Ericsson unveiled the Xperia Play.

While the device does not have the PlayStation namesake, it has a slide-out controller pad, complete with the four inconic PlayStation buttons: The circle, cross, square and triangle.

The phone was one of three announced today by Sony Ericsson, the joint venture between Sony and Ericsson.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play will be available globally in select markets starting in march at an undisclosed price. The first carrier to carry the device will be Verizon Wireless.

But it’s a little unclear how the Xperia Play will fit into Sony’s wider lineup of portable gaming devices.

Sony recently announced the NGP, a gaming device that has nearly every capability of a phone, except for the ability to make a call. It has a forward- and rear-facing camera, as well as 3G connectivity to allow for constant Internet access. In addition, Sony continues to maintain the PlayStation portable, or PSP, brand.

Xperia Play will run on Android’s latest operating system, Gingerbread, and is the first certified PlayStation smartphone, meaning it will have access to PlayStation’s strong catalog of game content.

The content will be key to the device’s success.

But smartphones already on the market today, especially the iPhone, have a wide variety of inexpensive games to pick from. Microsoft has also integrated Xbox features and many of its console’s games into the Windows Phone 7 experience.

Sony Ericsson said it will have 50 titles available at launch. It has partnered with key publishers in the gaming industry to make great titles available at launch, including EA’s Need for Speed, Sims 3 and a world-first multiplayer version of FIFA 10 for mobile. Other titles will come from Glu, Activision and Gameloft.

But of course, all of these games will have to be tailored to the Xperia Play’s one-of-a-kind game controller, making for a longer development time.

As Sony Ericsson prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, it believes it has successfully made the transition to building smartphones, banking on the Android operating system. Still, it remains a small niche player with a global market share of four percent last year.

Sony Ericsson forecasts modest growth in units in the global handset market for 2011.

Sony Ericsson also unveiled the Xperia Neo and the Xperia Pro, two smartphones also running Android’s Gingerbread. The pro will have a slide-out Qwerty keyboard and will be aimed at business users. The Pro will be available in Q2, and the Neo will be available by the end of Q1. Prices were unavailable.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110213/sony-ericsson-reveals-game-plan-with-xperia-play/feed/ 1 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.”

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