Orange, a UK ISP and mobile phone company, is reportedly close to signing a deal with an ad-supported mobile virtual network called Blyk that would offer certain Orange customers credits on their service in exchange for receiving text-based ads on their mobile phones. According to an article in New Media Age, Orange has been in talks with Blyk for months to offer subscribers aged 16-24 credits of £15 ($25) if they receive ads on their phones. The partnership looks similar to an effort by German carrier E-Plus to offer lower-cost mobile phone service to customers in exchange for ads. Continue »

Globalstar today closed on $738 million in financing, while rival satellite operator TerreStar launched its new bird, TerreStar-1. Globalstar plans to use its money to fund operations and launch a new generation of satellites in 2010 that will deliver all IP-based voice and data to its customers through 2025. Before celebrating, know that Globalstar’s new constellation of satellites will  provide speeds of up to 256kbps down.

Like the slow data speeds, the financing is less exciting than it first appears. Continue »

Mobile phone sales are going to decline sharply over the next five years, to the tune of 1.04 billion devices, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. In its new report, “The Financial Crisis: Analyzing the impact on global mobile markets,” the research firm has revised its forecast for device sales over the next five years down by 14 percent.

Some 6.39 billion devices are forecast to purchased between now and 2013, Informa said, vs. its previous expectation that 7.43 billion devices would be bought. For 2009, Informa revised its forecast for the number of mobiles phones that will be purchased down to 1.12 billion devices from 1.32 billion. This is a brutal revision for a business that has always been about furious growth and razor-thin margins. Continue »

They say it takes money to make money, but it you want to be in the top 100 apps in the Apple App Store, it’s gonna take you $1,875 per day to buy enough ads, according to a report out today from AdWhirl. The company, which operates an advertising platform for the iPhone (and would love to sell more ads, presumably), looked at how to propel iPhone apps into the upper echelon of popularity without spending too much on advertising. Instead of spending almost $2,000 a day, the study found that releasing a free app seems to help drive usage. That use, in turn, gives developers a target market to which they can advertise a paid app, or capitalize on for viral growth. Other findings include:

• Untargeted cross-promotions generate conversions at approximately 0.2 percent or less from each impression (20 downloads for every 10,000 ads displayed).
• Targeted cross-promotions convert at approximately three times or more.
• Free apps with fewer features that can be upgraded to paid apps can increase sales up to five times, without cannibalizing sales of the paid version.
• It only takes about 2,500 downloads per day to break into the Top 100 Apps.

Sense Networks, a location-based services company headquartered in New York, said today it’s raised an undisclosed amount of money from investors led by Intel Capital. Citing a gag order from Intel, CEO Greg Skibiski not only wouldn’t say how much the round was for, he wouldn’t disclose who the other investors were. Such an attempt to control what is just basic information is straight-up bad behavior on the part of the venture arm as far as I’m concerned. VentureBeat reported last week that Sense had raised $6 million following a battle-of-the-funding between Intel and Sequoia Capital. It had previously raised $3 million.

One way or the other, it makes perfect sense that investors would be getting all hot and heavy about this company, which combines historical and real-time data gathered through GPS and Wi-Fi with real-world information to come up with analytics that can help users make better decisions. It was shortly after meeting with Sense Networks’ Chief Scientist Tony Jebara last year that I started to admire the idea behind the company and at the same time to consider the true potential of its underlying platform, Macrosense. Continue »

Mushroom's PortaBella device

Good things come in threes, and any triptych of services is the basis for a journalist to declare a trend, so when I met three different companies last week that offered a way to bundle a variety of mobile broadband connections into one fat pipe, I was compelled to pull together an article about them. The idea is not new — Mushroom Networks has been bundling wired broadband services into a fatter pipe for over a year, as has Sharedband, but providing fatter and more resilient mobile broadband by bundling together service from WiMAX, Wi-Fi and 3G providers could gain in prominence as more folks take their computers on the go. However, so far, these services are for corporations or those with fat wallets. Continue »

Updated with more service related details : Comcast, the largest U.S. cable company and one of the country’s biggest broadband service providers, says it has started to sell a new wireless broadband service called High-Speed 2go across cities in its cable footprint. Here are some facts:

• Comcast will offer its own wireless laptop cards and the service will not have any voice component. The card is free with a 1 year contract or it can be purchased for $99 and customers can go month to month. If you switch from a phone company, Comcast will waive off the $99 it charges for the card.
• It’s a combination of Clearwire’s WiMAX-based wireless broadband and Sprint’s 3G EVDO data. The nationwide laptop device automatically switches between available 4G and 3G networks. On the 3G service (provided by Sprint) there is a 5 GB amount of data usage included in the plan. The 4G service will follow Clearwire’s terms of service. Continue »