It’s not too big of a surprise that various wireless providers would focus on building out high speed wireless broadband options throughout Northern California. Whether its 3G, muni WiFi or even one day WiMAX, early adopter dominated regions like Silicon Valley and the Bay Area (that […] Read more »
While online music sites like Napster are still trying to figure out how to make money, San Francisco-based digital music startup IODA has been creating a pretty good businesses by finding a focus: Indie bands. IODA (stands for Independent Online Distribution Alliance) helps small independent music […] Read more »
MySpace has plans to expand to China, hopefully in partnership with a local wireless operator. China is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world, and could have has plans to work with a local wireless operator. According to a source in China, MySpace […] Read more »
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Updated, 09/19/06: After more than a month of bidding on the AWS wireless spectrum, the hotly contested auction was becoming a bit of a snooze. Even we were getting tired of following the slow-moving process in its closing days. But today the FCC said the auction […] Read more »
Advertising might be the salvation of content creators on the web, but will it translate to the small screen? That was the big question on everyone’s mind at CTIA last week. The optimists (read start ups) hoped that ads could catalyze the mobile content market, by […] Read more »
CTIA, Los Angeles: Well CTIA, you really couldn’t resist that last day Paris Hilton cameo – she was on stage for about 3 seconds to support her latest music video on cell phones before a mobile social networking panel, and now wireless geeks at the show […] Read more »
It’s the last day of the CTIA mobile convention and while the gadget announcements haven’t been exactly flowing out of the show, there’s been a few notable newly launched phones around the floor and more than enough gadget-related press releases shoved into reporters hands. What do […] Read more »
CTIA, Los Angeles: News Corp’s COO Peter Chernin is certainly getting a lot of attention this week after emphasizing MySpace’s weight in the web 2.0 world. This morning, however, he was concentrating on Mobile as part of his keynote at the CTIA wireless convention in Los […] Read more »
CTIA, Los Angeles: It was easy to doubt RealNetwork’s potential success in the wireless market when its CEO Rob Glaser made a sort of mobile coming-out speech at the CTIA convention in 2005. (This is a guy I once saw doze off during an onstage panel […] Read more »
Nokia is starting to push the wireless technology unlicensed mobile access, or UMA, in the U.S., and will offer a cell phone for T-Mobile’s planned UMA launch in September. Earlier this month Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told the WSJ that Nokia had developed a UMA phone […] Read more »
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Like many other large technology companies with a sizeable installed base and big developer communities, Skype Technologies, a division of eBay, habitually takes the innovations emanating out of its developer community and reinterprets them under its own label. Today thousands of developers are looking to create […] Read more »
Reports are starting to pick up on the fact that Qualcomm, the San Diego-based wireless company that has thus far dominated the key cellular standards, is staring an uncertain future in the eye. It seemed like the company would make an easy sweep of the wireless […] Read more »
Friendster might have taken some hits over the years, but the social network recently raised a new round of funding and has become surprisingly popular in the Philippines. Given that Filipino mobile users are some of the most avid text messagers in the world, it’s a […] Read more »
DivX, the video company well known for its coding and compression technology, quietly launched a YouTube-style online video sharing community, Stage6, a few weeks ago. While there seems to be no end to the video-sharing sites out there, DivX’s site already has a pretty impressive set […] Read more »
We wrote a bit about using text messages to find information over cell phones this week. 4INFO, a company we mentioned in passing, announced a deal with TV Guide to provide local TV listings via SMS and WAP today. The company’s CEO Zaw Thet said in […] Read more »
As the average cell phone user in the U.S. becomes more comfortable with text messaging, startups are busy creating services to unlock information with SMS. Only 36% of U.S. cell phone subscribers send text messages according to M:Metrics, though that usage grew almost 6% over the […] Read more »
Soon after the AWS spectrum auction exited stage one, more than $12 billion had been bid, and two high profile groups — the satellite consortion, Wireless DBS, and the cable group Dolan Family Holdings — had already left the building. In the second stage of the […] Read more »
Startups like Vancouver-based EQO, which have been working on getting more support from Skype as a mobile partner, got some bad news recently — competitor iSkoot scooped up a coveted deal to help Skype mobilize. While three-old EQO didn’t seem too pleased with Skype’s moves in […] Read more »
Qualcomm, says its buying a wireless startup called Qualphone for $18 million. Um, talk about a company that seems built to flip to the Qualcomm buyout machine. Not just the obvious name, but the two companies are both based in San Diego, California. We didn’t get […] Read more »
AirG, a Vancouver-based mobile social network provider, says it has hit the milestone of 10 million unique users, growing from 7 million users just a few months ago. Unlike social networks like MySpace and Facebook that have mobile services, AirG has no PC-based network, and works […] Read more »
At the Linux World conference in downtown San Francisco this week, the world’s leading cell phone manufacturers, Nokia and Motorola, took a decidedly different approach to embracing the Penguin. Motorola took the stage – Nokia chose a back seat. Motorola played up an aggressive strategy proclaiming […] Read more »
The AWS spectrum auction bids are still climbing. The auction, so far has brought in over $10 billion in total bids. At Round 22, and day seven, the bidding has reached a total of $10.75 billion, with the traditional wireless carriers dominating the board — T-Mobile, […] Read more »
Tropos, the WiFi mesh hardware company behind GoogleFi, and Earthlink’s city-deployments, might have been smart in cornering the market on MuniFi networks, but it also realized that it needed to upgrade in order to meet the demands of heavily-used networks. It has faced competition from other […] Read more »
Pando, the startup that has created a drag-n-drop file-sharing application, says it’s hit the one millionth install mark, in just the three months since it launched into public beta. Pando has released a plug-in for Outlook and Yahoo Messenger, and founder Yaron Samid says several other […] Read more »
GigaTeam stopped by Cyworld’s launch fiesta at San Francisco’s Fluid Ultra Lounge last night and mingled with the Cyworld crew, relaxing after their debut. A lot of high-level execs from Korea were wandering the floor, from both SK Telecom and Cyworld division, along with Cyworld U.S. […] Read more »
Google Talk is offering an update today, according to reports, that will enable users to easily transfer files, set presence with music, and send and receive voice mails. According to the article its also Google Talk’s first birthday. We haven’t checked out the upgrade because it […] Read more »
T-Mobile plans to launch a Wi-Fi-cellular converged phone service in Seattle and potentially one other market next month on September 12th, sources say. More markets will follow soon after. The city of Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area are the likely candidates for a possible […] Read more »
The AWS spectrum auction has now hit over $7 billion in total bids, which is just the minimum bidding total that analysts had predicted the entire auction would deliver. The more traditional carriers are starting to move past the much-talked-about media consortiums, and Verizon Wireless led […] Read more »
The super-speedy next generation WiFi standard (802.11n) could be delayed, according to some reports. Another draft of the standard was due out later this year, but now isn’t expected until the beginning of 2007. That means final ratification probably won’t be until 2008. Standards fights, especially […] Read more »
Philadelphia’s former WiFi and technology guru, Dianah Neff, will land at the private consulting firm Civitium, points out Muni Wireless and a release from Civitium. Looks like the public face of Philly’s metro WiFi got smart and will use her high profile to follow the dollars […] Read more »
The AWS spectrum auction really heated up in the ninth round of bidding, bringing the total amount of bids to $3.58 billion and net bids at $3.49 billion. That’s a jump of over a billion dollars from the eighth round, which brought in a total $2.43 […] Read more »
Last week the mobile content management company Motricity rung up at least $32 million in a series G funding that could include an additional amount of financing. They’re sure moving through the alphabet pretty quickly! There has been some speculation about how much more money their […] Read more »
Motricity, a Durham, NC-based wireless start up has raised another $32 million in funding, led by Advanced Equities, which is the companies 7th round to date. The 5-year-old company, which has so far raised $152 million, also says it will add more funding to the current […] Read more »
How many web travel startups make a bubble? We’re not sure, but it’s starting to look like one. Yesterday Groople said it has raised $6 million led by ArrowPath Venture Partners and FA Technology Ventures for its group-targeted travel. Every week we get news of online […] Read more »
Fotolog, one of the many photosharing sites out there, says it already has four million members. And with no attempts at creating a non-English site, users are mostly in Latin America. (Unintended consequence of a Flat world?) (Update: Fotolog’s site went down for awhile, but is […] Read more »
Updated for Round 5: After Round 5, the total bid amounts came to $1.47 billion in total bids, and $1.45 billion in net bids. Wireless DBS moved to the top with $352.5 million, followed by T-Mobile with $324.7 million, SpectrumCo with $212.3 million. Further down in […] Read more »
The University of California is joining Google’s book scanning project, and Google will scan several million of UC’s titles. The project is somewhat controversial, but we’re thinking if author’s and publisher’s groups were half as powerful as the RIAA or MPAA, there would be a bigger […] Read more »
Yahoo was right to get flustered when MySpace was declared the Net’s new #1. But if MySpace keeps growing at its current rate, Yahoo might have to face the music soon enough. ComScore’s July numbers are out and UBS takes a look: Yahoo is still the […] Read more »
We just sat in on the Sprint’s conference call, which brought together Sprint Nextel CEO Gary Forsee, Motorola’s Ed Zander, Intel’s Sean Maloney and Samsung’s KiTae Lee. Here are the details. Sprint confirmed it has chosen mobile WiMAX as the technology for its 4G network and […] Read more »
Nokia says its buying the Seattle-based digital music company Loudeye for $60 million, which aggregates content and rights from music labels for distribution across mobile, Internet and other platforms. Nokia said it is paying $4.50 per share. Loudeye’s stock had sat under $1 for weeks, mostly […] Read more »
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