The FCC has launched apps for the iPhone and Android platforms which can test your mobile connection speed. You may need to run them a few times to get some accuracy, but it is good that we can finally test our mobile speeds with ease. Let us know what you get- my first test is pictured in this article. To get the app search for ‘Fcc Mobile Broadband Test’ in the iTunes app store of Android Market.

“Washington, D.C. – Today, the Federal Communications Commission launched new digital tools — the Consumer Broadband Test and the Broadband Dead Zone Report — that allow consumers to test their broadband service and report areas where broadband is not available.

“Transparency empowers consumers, promotes innovation and investment, and encourages competition,” said Chairman Julius Genachowski. “The FCC’s new digital tools will arm users with real-time information about their broadband connection and the agency with useful data about service across the country. By informing consumers about their broadband service quality, these tools help eliminate confusion and make the market work more effectively.”

The Consumer Broadband Test measures broadband quality indicators such as speed and latency, and reports that information to consumers and the FCC. The mobile version — the FCC’s first mobile app — is available through the Apple and Android app stores. The fixed version is available at www.broadband.gov. Two popular broadband testing tools are used in this beta version — the Ookla, Inc. Speed Test and the Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT) running on the Measurement Lab (M-Lab) platform. In the future, the FCC anticipates making additional broadband testing applications available for consumer use. The Commission does not endorse any specific testing application.”

comScore has reported on US mobile sector market share for January 2010 and the results are quite surprising. Of course year on year stats rarely give a true picture, but these show that RIM and Google are growing the fastest, especially Google, and that Microsoft and Palm are really struggling. Apple is steady with a 0.3% increase which is a surprise.

“42.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones in an average month during the November to January period, up 18 percent from the August through October period. RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 43.0 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, rising 1.7 percentage points versus three months earlier. Apple ranked second with 25.1 percent share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft at 15.7 percent, Google at 7.1 percent (up 4.3 percentage points), and Palm at 5.7 percent. Google’s Android platform continues to see rapid gains in market share…”

Michael Morgam from ABI has put together an analysis of the world’s top 10 handset makers. On the whole it looks back rather than forward and does consider ’sell in’ numbers which is the amount of phones shipped out, not sold to end customers.

“The numbers are in, and it’s time to make sense of the data. ABI’s Michael Morgan checks out the world’s 10 largest branded cell phone makers in the fourth quarter of 2009, providing sales data as well as insight into their strategy and competitive position in the market.

Nokia has requested a patent for a Piezoelectric Kinetic Energy Harvester which in the real world means a battery that can recharge itself. Great idea if it works. Thanks to Teresa for the link.

A battery for an electronic device is contained within a first frame that is coupled to a second frame by one or more piezoelectric elements. The second frame is coupled to a device chassis by one or more additional piezoelectric elements. In response to translation and/or rotation of the electronic device, portions of forces induced by the battery mass are transferred to the piezoelectric elements. Electrical energy output by these piezoelectric elements is received in a power controller and can be applied to the battery. Additional device components can also be contained within the first frame so as to increase the total mass that induces forces applied to the piezoelectric elements.

Apple has stepped up the mobile lawsuits and popped one on HTC for supposedly infrnging 20 Apple patents. When will it ever end? Thanks to Trevor.

From NYT- “Apple said on Tuesday that it had filed lawsuits against HTC, the Taiwan-based phone maker, accusing it of infringing on 20 Apple patents tied to the iPhone.

The suits, filed with the office of the United States International Trade Commission and the United States District Court in Delaware, say HTC violated patents covering the phone’s user interface, internal architecture and hardware.

HTC makes the Nexus One, a phone designed and sold by Google that runs Google’s Android operating system. Google was not mentioned in the suit, but the lawsuits are likely to worsen the already strained relations between Apple and Google.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said in a news release: “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it.” Mr. Jobs added: “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

How’s times change…

The European Commision has approved the merger of Orange UK and T-Mobile UK, but it is dependant on an amendment to an existing network sharing agreement.

The European Commission has cleared the proposed merger of Orange UK and T-Mobile UK, respectively France Télécom’s (FT) and Deutsche Telekom’s (DT) UK subsidiaries. The decision is conditional upon the amendment of an existing network sharing agreement with Hutchison 3G UK (3UK), to ensure that there remain sufficient competitors in the market, and the divestiture of a quarter of the combined spectrum of the merging parties in the 1800 MHz band, which is one of three frequency bands currently used for mobile communications in the UK. In light of these commitments, the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) withdrew its request to refer the case for review by the UK Competition Authorities.

” I am happy that we managed to resolve the competition issues in this case quickly in close cooperation with the Member State concerned,” said European Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia.

Orange UK is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French incumbent telecommunications operator France Telecom. It provides mobile telephony services in the UK and, to a lesser extent, broadband internet access services on a fixed network. T-Mobile UK is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the German incumbent telecommunications operator Deutsche Telekom. It provides mobile telephony services in the UK.

In the course of the investigation, the Commission identified no direct concerns in relation to the market for the provision of mobile telecommunications services to end-consumers, the wholesale market for access and call origination on public mobile telephone and the wholesale market for international roaming and related markets.

However, the Commission investigation showed that the transaction, as initially notified, could put at risk the future of T-Mobile’s Radio Access Network sharing agreement with 3UK (the Radio Access Network being one of the main infrastructure elements of a mobile network), which is the smallest mobile network operator (MNO) in the UK, owned by Hutchison Whampoa. This could threaten 3UK’s viability on the market and possibly eliminate a competitor. With the merger of the subsidiaries of FT and DT there will be only four players in the UK, hence the concerns about the fate of 3UK.

Second, the investigation also revealed that the combined amount of contiguous spectrum held by the parties at the 1800 MHz level (60 MHz) would be significantly larger than that of their competitors. This could result in the new entity being the only MNO in the UK able to offer next-generation mobile data services through Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology at the best possible speeds within the medium term.

In order to address the competition concerns identified by the Commission, the parties concluded a revised agreement with 3UK which will secure its position as a competitive force on the market, and offered to divest 15 MHz of spectrum at the 1800 MHz level. The Commission concluded that the commitments offered by the parties remedy the identified competition concerns.

The latest results from Palm are not looking good at all, especially in an industry where momentum is everything.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb 25, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) today indicated that it expects that revenues for the third quarter of fiscal year 2010 will be in the range of $285 million to $310 million on a GAAP basis and in the range of $300 million to $320 million on a non-GAAP basis.1 Revenues for the quarter and full year are being impacted by slower than expected consumer adoption of the company’s products that has resulted in lower than expected order volumes from carriers and the deferral of orders to future periods. Accordingly, Palm expects fiscal year 2010 revenues to be well below its previously forecasted range of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion. The company will provide more detail on its financial results during Palm’s third-quarter financial results conference call currently scheduled for Thursday, March 18.

“Palm webOS is recognized as a groundbreaking platform that enables one of the best smartphone experiences available today, and our work to evolve the platform and bring industry-leading technology to market continues. However, driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated,” said Jon Rubinstein, chairman and chief executive officer. “Our carrier partners remain committed, and we are working closely with them to increase awareness and drive sales of our differentiated Palm products.”

The Company expects to close its third fiscal quarter with a cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments balance in excess of $500 million.

Palm will announce its third-quarter fiscal year 2010 financial results on Thursday, March 18, shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern (1 p.m. Pacific), followed by a conference call for the public at 4:30 p.m. Eastern (1:30 p.m. Pacific).

Also, this from Business Insider doesn’t help matters- the stock has tanked already. Thanks to Trevor- ”

Palm is slashing its guidance, confirming that its Pre and Pixi smartphones and WebOS platform have been off to a slow start. Palm shares are down 18% on the news.

Since there’s no obvious way that Palm is going to boost its market share — even selling its phones at Verizon Wireless, the top U.S. carrier, hasn’t helped much, and we doubt AT&T will make a big impact — it seems that CEO Jon Rubinstein would be best off looking for a buyer now.

So who wants a next-generation smartphone platform? RIM? Nokia? HP? Dell?

Palm expects third-quarter sales to be in the range of $285 million to $310 million on a GAAP basis and $300 million to $320 million on a non-GAAP basis. The Street was expecting $425 million.

Palm also expects full year sales to be “well below” its forecasted range of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion; the Street was expecting $1.6 billion.

“Revenues for the quarter and full year are being impacted by slower than expected consumer adoption of the company’s products that has resulted in lower than expected order volumes from carriers and the deferral of orders to future periods,” the company said in a statement.”

Gartner has produced its final report covering all of 2009 and the news is good for Android, RIM and iPhone. All of the others are down except for webOS which took a measly 0.7% of the market and even Android was only showing 3.9% at the close- expect that last figure to change a lot in 2010 though. So, Symbian did not increase market share after all…

“In 2009, Nokia’s annual mobile phone sales to end users reached 441 million units, a 2.2 per cent drop in market share from 2008. Although Nokia outperformed industry expectations in sales and revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009, its declining smartphone ASP showed that it continues to face challenges from other smartphone vendors. “Nokia will face a tough first half of 2010 as improvement to Symbian and new products based on the Meego platform will not reach the market well before the second half of 2010,” said Ms Milanesi. “Its very strong mid-tier portfolio will help it hold market share, but its ongoing weakness at the high end of the portfolio will hurt its share of market value.”

Samsung was the clear winner among the top five with market share growing by 3.2 percentage points from 2008. This achievement came as a result of improved channel relationships with distributors to extend its reach and better address the needs of individual markets as well as a rich mid-tier portfolio. For 2010, the company is putting a focus on Bada, its new operating system (OS) that aims at adding the value of an ecosystem to its successful hardware lineup.

Motorola sold slightly more than half of its 2008 sales and exhibited the sharpest drop in market share, accounting for 4.8 per cent market share in 2009. “Its refocus away from the low-end market limited the volume opportunity, but should help it drive margins going forward. Motorola’s hardest barrier is to grow brand awareness outside the North American market, where it benefits from a long-lasting relationship with key communications service providers (CSPs).

In the smartphone OS market, Symbian continued its lead, but its share dropped 5.4 percentage points in 2009 (see Table 2). Competitive pressure from its competitors, such as RIM and Apple, and the continued weakness of Nokia’s high-end device sales have negatively impacted Symbian’s share.

At Mobile World Congress 2010, Symbian Foundation announced its first release since Symbian became fully open source. Symbian^3 should be made available by the end of the first quarter of 2010 and may reach the first devices by the third quarter of 2010, while Symbian^4 should be released by the end of 2010.

“Symbian had become uncompetitive in recent years, but its market share, particularly on Nokia devices, is still strong. If Symbian can use this momentum, it could return to positive growth,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.”

Handango, the home of never ending sales and iffy customer service, has been bought by PocketGear.

Durham, NC – February 23, 2010 – PocketGear, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Handango, the leading provider of smartphone applications globally, creating the world’s largest cross platform, open app store and content marketplace with a catalog of more than 140,000 paid and free titles that are available for discovery and download by the more than 4 billion consumers worldwide using Android©, Symbian OS©, BlackBerry©, Windows Mobile©, Palm©, Linux, and Java© powered mobile devices. PocketGear and Handango are the two largest independent app stores and combined to date have generated over $400 million in mobile application revenues from customers living in more than 175 countries and using over 2,000 unique mobile devices.

With the acquisition, PocketGear’s mobile app marketplace has been expanded to connect more than 32,000 developers in the PocketGear Developer Program with over 40 PocketGearpowered storefront and distribution partners, including 4 of the world’s top 5 handset manufacturers, 4 of the top 5 mobile operators in the US, 3 of the top 10 mobile operators globally, and leading media and ecommerce companies including Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, Research in Motion, Microsoft, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless. The reach of PocketGear’s direct to consumer app stores has also expanded to include the largest independent app store, Handango.com, joining PocketGear’s app store network that includes PocketGear.com, Mobile2Day.de, SymbianGear.com, AndroidGear.com, RIMGear.com, Smartphone.net, and PalmGear.com. In addition, more than 1,000 app developers are now using PocketGear’s developer storefront solutions to market and sell their mobile apps directly to consumers from their own websites and other marketing channels.” The full announcement is here.

The Environmental Working Group has produced a database of over 1000 mobile phones and listed their radiation levels. The Bold 9700, Nexus One and Droid do not fair well which probably explains the headache I have… Thanks to Julie for the link.

“New cell phones in 2010 are loaded with new features. For some models, like Motorola’s Droid, Blackberry Bold 9700, LG Chocolate Touch and HTC Nexus One by Google, consumers pay a hidden price: exposure to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation. You can see for yourself by looking the radiation levels for new 2010 cell phones.

Other new phones emit significantly less radiation.

Which is which? You won’t find out from those pricey ad campaigns or even the labels. Makers and vendors aren’t required to disclose their products’ radiation output at point of sale.

That’s why EWG has created a user-friendly interactive cell phone radiation list and database, covering more than 1,000 phones now on the market. We’ve updated it with the wireless industry’s latest and greatest offerings for the 2010 market.”

Vic Keegan from The Guardian feels that we should pay more for phone apps. Do you agree? “Easy to use mobile applications of the kind that Apple is pioneering are a huge economic opportunity to generate growth and jobs but also a conundrum. At a time when the whole world of computing is migrating into the “cloud”, with data stored out there on the web rather than on our computer desktops, the mobile world is moving in the opposite direction: nearly all of these games and services are being downloaded on to our mobile devices.

The result is that we are using our apps – and few more so than me – through dedicated silos rather than on the web. This has advantages, not least because data stored on your phone can be accessed more quickly, but also a big downside. This is partly because you are a prisoner of your service provider such as Apple, but mainly because if these apps were made for the web, then every phone would be able to access them, users would have big opportunities to share and developers wouldn’t have to spend money they haven’t got making multiple apps for incompatible phones.

At the moment, if you want to port an iPhone app to devices running Google’s Android operating system, you have to start building again from scratch. Apps would be much cheaper if they could be built to run across different platforms. Tom Hume, managing director of Brighton based FuturePlatforms, points out that Apple developers have to work in the Objective C computer language, whereas the HTML5 standard requires only minor changes between platforms…”

comScore has reported on the December 2009 US Mobile Subscriber Martket Share and the results are likely to cause iPhone sites to rejoice and to also suggest that RIM is on the decline. Maybe it’s true, who knows?

“comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry over the three month period between September and December 2009. The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the U.S. according to their share of current mobile subscribers age 13 and older, as well as the most popular forms of content and activity accessed via mobile device. The report found Motorola to be the top handset manufacturer with 23.5 percent market share, while RIM led among smartphone platforms with 41.6 percent market share.”

Trevor has sent in a link to iPhone Market Share: The Rest of the Story which attempts to look deep into the recent smartphone market share results and in my view offers some clarity while also managing to agree that the data can be looked at in many ways. Who knows what the real answer is?

“How did the most recent quarter of Apple (AAPL) iPhone sales compare to the competition? It depends. A statistician would say, “How do you want it to look?”

Philip Elmer-DeWitt recently wrote an article called “The iPhone grabs/loses market share”. In it, he discusses two other articles by different authors, using similar data, and coming up with opposite conclusions about the health of iPhone sales in the global smart phone market.

In one article, James Rogers for TheStreet.com reported that Q4 2009 iPhone sales comprised 16.4% of the global smart phone market, up from 10.8% in Q4 2008, a 52% increase while the smart phone market increased 28% over the same period.

In the other article, Niraj Sheth for the WSJ Blogs looked at sequential quarters and saw iPhone market share decrease from 18.1% to 16.6% from Q3 to Q4 2009, a 8.3% decrease while the global smart phone sales increased 30% over the same period.

Both of the above articles were based on opinions from professional analysts and are technically correct, but they provide a narrow view of the situation and individually or together, do not provide enough information to draw helpful conclusions. More analysis is needed to resolve the above discrepancy…”

From Calgary Herald- “Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry communications device, didn’t infringe a Motorola Inc. patent, a judge ruled Wednesday in London.

The High Court justice invalidated a Motorola patent and said that even if it had been valid, it hadn’t been infringed by two communications systems used by RIM.

The patent related to an e-mail gateway system.”

So that’s one down, five to go…

It would appear that i-mate is alive to fight another day. TamsPPC has the details and no doubt we can expect more devices which are not very good. Although, it would be great if something truly amazing popped up. Thanks to Gavin.

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