Car 2.0 — the era in which vehicles are connected to both communication networks and the power grid — is here. The evolution started years ago, led by the now mainstream practice of using GPS navigation systems in cars, and is moving to include plug-in vehicles that will charge up using the electrical grid. The Car 2.0 era will create an ecosystem in which entrepreneurs and companies can develop applications, communication networks, new types of vehicles and innovative services for truly networked vehicles. Read Earth2Tech’s Guide to Car 2.0 to learn about the key players and opportunities in this market.

The Internet and telecom buildouts have delivered billions of dollars of value to users and company shareholders, and the smart grid will soon start delivering similar worth via jobs and energy savings. But utilities now have to make choices about what networks they will construct or utilize for these deployments. While 96 percent of the smart grid networks in use are based on proprietary RF mesh technology, according to Pike Research’s Clint Wheelock, utilities are starting to look at options like cellular, WiMAX, metro Wi-Fi, and broadband over power lines. In some rare cases, utilities are even turning to fiber, like municipal utility EPB in Chattanooga, Tenn. Do utilities really need fiber-style 500Mbps of bandwidth to move energy information-based data services? Probably not, but it certainly helps to add on smart grid services as a twist on the “quadruple play” if a utility is looking for some stimulus funds to help the project along.

A group of venture capitalists with experience in mobile startup investments and $2 billion in capital among them said at the Mobilize 09 conference in San Francisco that they expect investments in mobile startups to pick up in 2010. John Balen, General Partner of Canaan Partners, who recently invested in mobile startup mCarbon, said they expect to see a lot of activity from mobile entrepreneurs throughout the rest of this year and next. Bob Borchers, General Partner of Opus Capital, agreed, and said heading into 2010, we should see investments pick up.

Well they couldn’t get much lower, given how the recession has knee-capped venture capital investments in general. The moderator of the panel, Larry Aragon, editor of the Venture Capital Journal, presented a slide that showed venture capital investments in early-stage mobile companies for several years, with a sharp decline in 2009. Continue »

The biggest complaint coming from mobile developers is that there are just too many darn cell phone platforms and devices for which they need to create applications. Compared to the dozens of platforms in the cell phone world, developing applications for PCs is a breeze. But until the cell phone world gets a whole lot simpler, there’s an answer to all that confusion, says Jon von Tetzchner, co-Founder and CEO of Opera Software: the browser.

The browser can be a unifying force and eliminate the need to create so many native mobile applications, explained Tetzchner and session moderator Ryan Paul, editor of Ars Technica. In the same way that new applications for PCs are largely web-based, with versions created for the most dominant browsers, the mobile web could follow a similar scenario.

Of course, Opera makes browsers and so has good reason to talk up their benefit. But others, like Bob Morris, head of mobile marketing for ARM Holdings, are also saying the browser is king of the mobile web. Morris believes that the increasing number of services accessed through web sites like Facebook and Gmail are what chip vendors and device makers needs to pay attention to and that browsers will ultimately drive the consumer experience more than the operating system. Tetzchner’s gotta like the sound of that!

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More than any other U.S. carrier, T-Mobile has led the charge when it comes to bringing Android-based phones to market — the company launched the G1, the myTouch, and now the Cliq. According to T-Mobile Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Cole Brodman, who spoke to Om onstage at our Mobilize 09 conference on Thursday, that’s because Android is the first platform that has lived up to the expectation of an open platform for the industry, one that brings together carriers, cell phone manufacturers and third-party developers. “I don’t see any other platform that is approaching it in the same way,” said Brodman.

Phone companies need to move away from the closed telco mind-set and more towards open, web-based infrastructure, said Brodman. The problem with the traditional closed telco model is that it takes way too long to get innovations to market, said Brodman, adding that, “I love the innovations I’m seeing on the Android platform.” The Android ecosystem is nearing 10,000 applications, he pointed out.

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Qualcomm is one of the companies that is most identified with 3G cellular technology. After all, the San Diego-based company, founded in 1985, holds key patents on CDMA-based 3G handsets, enabling it to slice a single-digit royalty off every phone. But what will Qualcomm do as carriers transition to higher-speed 4G networks, where the company doesn’t necessarily have such a catbird seat? Well, according to Qualcomm COO Len Lauer, who spoke today at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco, the company is betting on 3G staying around for a good long while and helping extend 3G’s life by offering ways to offload high-bandwidth services.

“Were still saying hello, hello, hello to 3G,” said Lauer. There are still a lot of opportunities left for 3G, and as the world transitions to 4G it will be done in a multi-modal rollout, meaning 4G networks will still work in tandem with the existing 3G network, said Lauer. “We have years and years ahead of us,” he added.

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It’s a less glamorous topic than the flashy unveiling of Motorola’s first Android phone, the Cliq, but the reality behind what makes devices like the Cliq possible is the high-speed network that connects it. Rick Keith, senior director of Strategy for Broadband Access Solutions at Motorola, who sat on a panel discussing high-speed networks at our Mobilize conference following the Cliq unveiling, went as far as to call his panel “like following up Madonna.” However, he pointed out, the network is doing the heavy lifting and will be a chief driver of innovation and new services.

Chetan Sharma, president of Chetan Sharma Consulting, pointed out that ubiquitous high-speed broadband, which could one day offer speeds like 50 megabits everywhere, will be driven by browsing, peer-to-peer networks and video. As Om has said before, consumers have an insatiable appetite for bandwidth, and if the networks are available, consumers will find ways to use it and developers will create innovative services to fill it. At those kind of “ultraband” speeds, “everything that can be connected will be connected,” said Ken Denman, CEO of Openwave Systems. “We’re at a state where you put a cell phone base station anywhere, and it gets filled up.”

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