Mobile Advertising - Not If, But When For years now mobile has been generating a lot of buzz. Despite all the hype and anticipation, until recently most people have looked at their phones as just that -- devices for calling people. Texting and ring tones, of course, have been big for awhile, but as a mobile data device phones were lacking. That has changed for people who bought smart phones and data plans, and the iPhone has popularized it. But what's left to get mobile to the next level - ubiquitous use of the web for data?

The things that have been missing are:

1.) Cheap data plans
2.) Powerful-enough low-cost devices
3.) 'Killer apps'

As with the Internet, advertising will be the killer-app for mobile, specifically location-aware advertising and search. The development of the Google phone will accelerate this trend and push it to the fore-front. Imagine the power of location-aware advertisements telling you where the best local restaurants are, based on your preferences, clothing sales that would interest you, people you want to meet, etc.. Advertisers will pay for the opportunity and many people will gladly trade a little privacy for cheaper data and better phones. Within 6 months to a year you will be able to buy data plans cheaply, with advertising part of the package.  ¶ 12:15 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

  Growth in Linux on Mobile Phones

Behind the scenes Linux has become entrenched in mobile phones. The iPhone itself runs a slimmed down version of Mac OS X Leopard, and the upcoming Google phone will run Linux (perhaps Ubuntu, based on the popularity of the OS at Google).

But the list doesn't stop there. Linux Devices has a long list of phones running Linux, many of them only available outside the U.S. There are an increasing number of companies offering Linux environments on handsets including Limo, and Canonical's Ubuntu Mobile for MID devices. TuxMobil offers instructions for do-it-yourself Linux installation on mobile devices.

The real test of an operating system is what you can run on it, and here the Apple iPhone and the Google phone have a chance to shine. The mobile network providers have closed off the phone APIs for a long time, but with Apple's clout they convinced AT&T to make the phone an open device. The G-phone has the same promise, but it may be awhile before all (or most) devices are open.

The phone companies have long been afraid of being the pipe provider only, and have kept devices closed as a result. That model is now starting to show some cracks. Going forward, expect the trickle of open phones to increase until we get a flood of open devices.

  ¶ 7:13 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Linux kernel community

There are more indications this month of the continuing growth of Linux. A new report from the Linux Foundation reports that roughly 3,700 developers from more than 200 companies have contributed to the kernel since 2005. The top 10 coders have contributed nearly 15% of the total submissions and the top 30 coders nearly 30 percent. Al Viro logged a whopping 1,571 submissions to the kernel, the most of any developer.

Breaking down the numbers further, 13.9% of developers were determined to be working on their own time, 12.9% of developers affiliation was 'unknown', and the remainder were split up among a large number of companies, including Red Hat at 11.2%.

Open IT World has a good overview of the report.

Mobile development on Linux appears to be growing rapidly as well. More on that tomorrow.

  ¶ 5:49 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

  Mobile Internet Devices

There's a new class of mobile devices out there - not laptops or cell phones, but a little bit of both. Think iPhone with more computing power and a larger screen and real keyboard, and you've got the idea. They're called Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and they are part of an Ultra-Mobile PC initiative pushed by Intel.

We've seen such devices for some time now, starting with the early PDAs such as Apple's ill-fated Newton. Recently we've seen more capable devices based on Linux including Nokia's 770 and more recent N800 (both based on Debian and using ARM instead of Intel chips). Nokia, slow to embrace open source because of their commitment to Symbian, have started an open source mobile community. They're saying the right things but it's too much to expect them to embrace Linux over Symbian.

Intel is hoping to create a whole new class of device using the MID standard. Powered by Linux, they aim to be ultra low-powered with battery charges lasting 24 hours or more, and with the usefulness of a PC. They demonstrated an iPhone like device last year, and companies are actively using the new standard to create new devices. This is Intel's chance to make some significant inroads in the mobile market. A move to handsets and lower-end devices is probably in the works.

Long viewed as just another mobile OS, Linux is being embraced by leading devices like the iPhone and the upcoming Google phone as well as the MID devices. It's looking like there's room for perhaps 3-4 significant mobile OSs: Symbian, Linux Mobile Windows, and perhaps an upstart. The opening up of phone APIs embraced by Google and Apple will only accelerate the move to open systems, resulting in lots of commercial as well as open source apps. Nokia would be will advised to make its Symbian mobile development easier and more open source friendly, and in a hurry.

To me, things will get really interesting when Linux is scaled down to work on cheaper handsets. That would really open up the market for mobile device applications, but the proprietary OSs will be with us for awhile until the low end devices get more CPU and memory without driving up the price.

  ¶ 7:10 AM 0 Comments Links to this post