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Frank Meehan Steps Down As INQ CEO; Co-Founder Ken Johnstone Takes Over

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:14:24 +0000

Frank Meehan is stepping down as the CEO of INQ, the Hutchison-owned mobile phone maker that has been a trailblazer — if a very small one — in the mobile industry, with the first devices to integrate Spotify, Skype and Facebook into the phone’s browser. Ken Johnstone, who co-founded the company with Meehan and had been head of product and design, is stepping up into the role in his place — and that could mean further phones based around social networks such as Twitter, as well as smartphones developed on OS platforms beyond Android.

Although it has never been a dominant player, INQ has been something of a groundbreaker in the mobile device world. It was the first to include a physical button on a device that provided a direct link to Skype; it was the first to put Spotify on its devices; and it was one of the first to use APIs from Facebook to integrate the social network more closely on two of its Android-based models (one pictured here) — a customization that later got extended to Foursquare.

More recently, it hit the news when Meehan floated the idea of looking more closely at Windows Phone for handsets in the wake of Google’s acquisition of Motorola (NYSE: MMI) Mobility.

It will be interesting to see whether Meehan’s successor will follow through with Meehan’s strategies on devices. When mocoNews interviewed Johnstone earlier this year, he extolled the virtues of the Android platform, but was interested in WP7, too. And he didn’t deny that INQ could apply the Facebook/Foursquare model to other social networks like Twitter.

“We love Android. It’s a very capable platform,” he told mocoNews, but he also added that he thought Windows Phone 7 had “cool things on it, but it remains to be seen if it takes off.”

On the subject of incorporating other social networks into the Android experience — the Facebook integration means that the social network’s timeline and other services like the calendar appear directly on the user’s homescreen, among other features — he did not deny that Twitter might also be among those that will get the INQ treatment.

“We cannot go into any detail right now,” he said, noting that the company might have more to share at some point soon. “Mobile is a fast moving game and we need to facilitate other brands.”

Meehan himself is leaving INQ, but he is not leaving Hutchison altogether. He plans to stay on as an adviser to the CEO of Hutchison, Li Ka-Shing. In that role, he will “concentrate on the VC side” and look at more investments, according to a note from Meehan on Twitter.

That is something Meehan has been doing for some time already: he sits on the boards of several tech companies that Ka-Shing has invested in via his Horizons VC firm, including the music streaming site Spotify, news discovery site Trapit, the video-status update site Tout, the mobile internet company Tom.com and other undisclosed investments.

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Android vs Windows Phone 7: At least one handset maker thinking about it

Om Malik — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 04:30:07 +0000

The blockbuster deal between Motorola and Google is going to be a game-changer, and it will force many of the smaller handset makers to rethink their reliance on Google’s Android operating system. Many mobile industry insiders have shared that sentiment with me privately, and now one of them is ready to go on the record.

“We see a number of major vendors very seriously considering Windows Mobile as a core platform and therefore we are following their lead and examining it as well to complement our work in Android to date,” said Frank Meehan, chief executive officer (CEO) of INQ, the Hutchison Whampoa company that came up with a Skype phone and a Facebook phone. Meehan is worried about the latest Android development. Hutchison owns and operates 3G networks across the world under the brand name, “3.” And when he says Windows Mobile, he does mean Windows Phone 7 operating system.

INQ started to work on an Android-based device in 2009 and since then has been selling Android-based smartphones. “From a group perspective at Hutchison Whampoa, we have worked hard at bringing Android to consumers across our operations,” he said. “However this year there has been a dramatic increase in the way companies are looking to maximize the potential revenues of IPR (intellectual property) holdings, and the trend for many companies is now to concentrate on litigation rather than innovation.”

Meehan, a long time veteran of the mobile business, believes that ecosystem players need to take a deep breath and learn from GSM where major companies involved with development of that standard got together and came up with a way to help grow the mobile ecosystem. Meehan has a point and I do believe that eventually the mobile OS players will have to adopt a similar approach or else we are going to be stuck in a patent related mess for a long time.

“The advantages with Windows Mobile is that the legal issues and resulting costs seem to be much less,” Meehan said. He thinks the quick growth of Android — almost 600,000 activations a day — has made it a big target. But if Windows Phone 7 grows as quickly, then who knows if that will be hit by similar legal troubles, Meehan argued.

Meehan took a swing at rival Motorola and added, “It is telling that the Motorola Board decided that they could get more value out of 15-20 year old patents rather than use their huge R&D to create new exciting technologies over the next 10 years which is what Motorola used to do very well.”

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Review: Meet The Facebook Phone, INQ Cloud Touch

Om Malik — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:07:46 +0000

There has been a lot of speculation about a Facebook phone, but we still don’t know what it quite looks like. However, a new device from INQ, a London-based phone maker, dubbed INQ Cloud Touch, shows the possibilities of a Facebook phone, something I wrote about last year.

For the past week, I have been using the phone, which takes its inspiration from the first version of the iPhone. It is hard to tell that this handsome featherweight smartphone is based on Google’s Android operating system. Your first, and most of the important, interactions on the phone are with Facebook services, though there is nothing preventing you from using the Android applications.

Google, Android & Facebook: Oh My!

The phone, which is GSM/WCDMA, is able to work across the planet and I tested it on the T-Mobile USA network. There were hardly any dropped calls and the call quality was pretty solid – I am guessing that it is thanks to both the radio engineering and the network. Given how slow the 3G networks are in the US, I decided to use Wi-Fi as my primary Internet connection on this device, which was perfect when using some of my favorite Android OS apps such as Amazon Kindle, Nimbuzz, Evernote and Dropbox. You can access the Google Apps’ marketplace just as quickly as you can sign-in to your Google account, and you can access various Google services including Google Voice like you would on any normal Android device. However, this phone is for Facebook lovers.

So, let’s talk about the Facebook experience. After booting up the phone, you come to the welcome screen and all you need to do is enter your Facebook login. The phone populates your address book (you do need to select what kind of syncing you want to do) and logs you into Facebook’s messaging and other services.

Single Sign-On Rocks

The single sign-on removes the need for you to individually sign-in for every Android app – and there is a ton of those — that uses Facebook Connect. As an end customer, this single sign-on is going to make the phone inherently useful. You can check-in to places from the home screen, you can send messages from the home screen, and you can use your calendar from the home screen. One click access to the camera allows you to upload photos directly to Facebook photos.

They are all shown as separate apps, leveraging the recent consumer behavior of using dedicated apps for specific functions. I would argue that if you are a Facebook addict, then you pretty much don’t have to leave the home screen.

It seems INQ got access to an extended/new Facebook Mobile API, which allows it to do some amazing things with the Facebook data. INQ’s phone has borrowed a visual feed metaphor from apps like Flipboard and now allows you to directly see elements such as YouTube videos and photos right on the home screen. After using the Facebook visual feed for six days, I find the web-version of Facebook downright dowdy, slow and well, not fun.

Facebook + Spotify + Android = Fun

As someone who has trial access to Spotify, I have thoroughly enjoyed the integration of Spotify, Facebook and this phone. So if Shak (Spotify’s super evangelist) shares a song with me on Facebook, I can now click on the link and it plays in the Spotify app, which incidentally is fully integrated into the INQ phone. What does that mean for you? Fewer clicks and your home screen becomes the launch pad for your Facebook life as most apps are now cross-linked with each other.

However, here’s the app that is going to blow your mind: the People App. Think of your friends as featured on always updating baseball card. INQ says they got Facebook to extend their social graph API and then are using behind-the-scenes wizardry to suggest top 5/10/20 friends you interact most with.

This is a perfect way for one to manage the friend circle and get rid of some of the noise in your social graph. I am addicted and I want this feature on a desktop app.

The company spokesperson explained that all the Facebook services are based off APIs and Facebook for Android App, because when FB updates their app, the company can take advantage of it right away.

What do I think?

There is a lot to like about INQ Cloud Touch – from the packaging to all the accessories and even set-up handbook are top notch, colorful, and are bursting with energy. The phone itself is light and the touch screen is very responsive.

However, the device at times felt underpowered and sluggish, mostly because it was doing too many things at the same time on a puny processor (Qualcomm 7227 chipset, 600MHz) limited onboard memory (4 MB).

I found it ran out of power after a few hours – between 3 and 4 – when I turned on Wi-Fi and was using the Spotify service in tandem with other mobile apps. The Facebook app kept crashing on the test device, which at times soured me on the experience.

The toughest challenge for me personally was that I found the home screen a tad too busy. There are just too many calls to action, which are kind of contrary to the experience you get on an iPhone. I bet folks who are half my age are going to have no such problems and probably would appreciate busyness.

That said, it stands out in a sea of Android phones that are hard to distinguish and if you love Facebook and want to live inside the social network, this is the smart phone for you.

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INQ Launches in India

Om Malik — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:30:06 +0000

At our Mobilize 09 conference, Frank Meehan, CEO of London-based INQ, told me that his company was going to follow on the heels of its successful Facebook phone with more devices, including lower-cost smartphones targeting fast-growing mobile markets such as India. Today, the company launched its social mobile phones in India — and INQ has roped in MS Dhoni, captain of Indian cricket team, as its spokesperson. Aircel, a mobile carrier, will be selling the device to its customers. The INQ Mini 3G and the INQ Chat 3G will be available in India. The INQ Chat 3G is a QWERTY device. The highly competitive Indian mobile market has made it difficult for carriers to bank solely on voice revenues. The INQ devices are being made available at a time when Indian carriers are looking for ways to goose their data revenues.

This Week in Mobile Tech Manor #77: Gmail Got Better

James Kendrick — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:45:31 +0000

My favorite time of the week is here for the 77th time! That’s the time I get to share the happenings at my home office, Mobile Tech Manor (MTM), and ruminate over the implications of them. It was a rather slow week with no gadgets arriving, but that looks to change in just a few days. I spent some quality time with interesting software, and I’ll share thoughts about that.

Arrivals at the Manor

This week only one gadget arrived at MTM, and it’s not even a gadget. Oh it’s a piece of hardware, a nice phone in fact, but that’s not why it’s here. Verizon recently rolled out a spiffy new version of its VZ Navigator service. They asked me if I wanted to try the new service and sent a BlackBerry Curve with the service active. I’ll only have it for a short while but I want to compare it to the Sprint Navigation service I use heavily.

Navigator is the carrier’s GPS/ Navigation service that’s been around for a long time. This new version adds some features to bring it up to the level of its competition, most importantly the ability to cache the entire trip to map. Previous versions of Navigator only downloaded a small bit of a trip being routed, which meant a constant connection to Verizon’s network was mandatory to keep the trip flowing.

This new version ends that restriction, with a connection up front required, but since the entire trip is now cached the navigation session is fluid, network connection or not. I’ll be putting VZ Navigator through its paces to see if it’s worth the $10 monthly charge.

Verizon is going to send a Motorola Devour in a few days, I should have it for the next column. This is the “Baby Droid” with MotoBlur that the carrier is just starting to offer. I’m particularly interested in the sliding QWERTY keyboard, pictures of the Devour show it to be a capable keyboard.

Software stuff

I played with a lot of software this week, some intentionally and some unplanned. I have totally incorporated LogMeIn into my work flow, but I’ve covered that on the site. I did pay for a Mac program that has become a big part of my work day.

Viewfinder is a simple program that has a great interface, making it a good tool. Bloggers are always looking for artwork to include in posts, and Flickr is a good source of them. Many photos uploaded to Flickr are OK for bloggers to use due to the Creative Commons license. The problem is there are so many photos on Flickr that finding a good one to use in a post can be a daunting task. Viewfinder brings good image searching to the table, and it is so good at it I finally paid for it. The free version is full-featured, but has delays in place to entice you to pay for it. It’s only $22, so I ponied up the cash.

Gmail shenanigans

Google is a big part of my day, I’ll bet I spend 90% of it in either Gmail or Google Reader. This week Gmail got an overhaul, and I found out about it in a funny way. I sent an email to a coworker, and in it I indicated I had included a web link to point them to the intended web site. I hit the Send button, and a Gmail box opened up informing me that I had used the phrase “included a” but had included no attachment on the mail. “Did you forget the attachment?”

That was so cool. In this instance I had not forgotten an attachment, but we’ve all done that at times. Gmail is now scanning the email and making itself more useful by covering our back. Some folks won’t like it doing that but I find it useful.

Another big change was made in the way I use Gmail. I use the Remember The Milk (RTM) task system, and I have long used its Gmail gadget to track my tasks within Gmail. It’s not a great utility in Gmail, but it’s better than nothing. This morning when I fired up Gmail the RTM task pane suddenly appeared on the right side of the screen, and with new abilities. I didn’t change anything so this surprised me.

It didn’t last long, when I closed Gmail and restarted it the RTM gadget was back on the left side as always, with the same clunky interface. I did some investigating and RTM also has a browser add-on for Firefox and Chrome that looks that what I saw on my Gmail screen. The problem is I never installed it, and it has only appeared twice in Gmail like that and then went away. I’ll have to investigate this pretty thoroughly. I liked the changes, however briefly they appeared on their own.

Batteries

I bought the Apple Magic Mouse a while back, and I am loving it. I have been keeping my eye on battery consumption, as many have reported that the Magic Mouse caused the Apple Wireless Keyboard, which I also use, to eat batteries like M&Ms. Some are reporting going through a set of batteries a week in their keyboards since getting a Magic Mouse, thus my concern.

I am happy to report that my situation isn’t that bad. I do feel the keyboard batteries are getting used quicker than before I got the Magic Mouse, but not alarmingly so. I have replaced both the mouse and keyboard batteries once since getting the mouse a couple of months ago.

Personal

Thanks to all who expressed good wishes over the diabetic control problem I mentioned last week. I was scheduled to have the continual glucose monitor inserted this past week, but the doctor had to reschedule it. That won’t happen until next week now; I’ll keep you informed about how that goes.

e-Book of the week

This week I have been head down in the fifth book in the Nic Costa series. The Seventh Sacrament by David Hewson is another great mystery in the manner only Hewson can tell it. The same cast of characters is on hand to figure out what happened to the little boy those many years ago.

The cast of characters is what makes this Costa series so entertaining. Hewson has created a very complex cast for these books, and the main characters are some of the most difficult ones I’ve come across. In the beginning of the series I questioned if Hewson would be able to mature these characters well. I needn’t have worried, the characters in this series have grown with each subsequent book in the series, and marvelously so. Hewson is to be commended for his story-telling skills.

Wrap-up

That’s my week, I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll be back next week, same bat time, same bat channel. Until then, be safe.

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INQ to Make Android Phones

Jennifer Martinez — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:17:13 +0000

INQ plans to release an Android-based phone by next year, company CEO Frank Meehan revealed, joining a small — yet growing — group of handset makers building phones on top of the Google mobile OS platform, including Motorola and HTC. Meehan told Om that the older players in the handset market have been sluggish in adapting new mobile operating systems, which is a risky strategy as new, nimble handset makers like INQ enter the ring. He said Motorola made the right move by making the leap to Android to rejuvenate its business. “In this game, you’ve got to come out with a handset every year,” said Meehan. “You can’t just hang around.”

INQ is best known for its Facebook-oriented feature phone, which tightly integrates the social network into the device. The company is set to release two phones by the end of this year, the INQ Mini 3G and INQ Chat 3G, which will include Twitter integration in addition to Facebook. Meehan said that more people in the UK access Facebook from INQ phones than the iPhone, and the company has accomplished this feat by targeting the under 35-year-old demographic.

Now that INQ has already developed Facebook- and Twitter-focused phones, what’s next for the company? By the looks of recent events, possibly a Spotify phone. Hutchinson Whampoa Chairman Li Ka-Shing recently took a stake in Spotify, a music streaming service, and put Meehan on the company’s board. (Hutchinson Whampoa owns INQ.) Li is also an investor in Facebook and upped his stake in Facebook to more than $100 million from $60 million last year. Though Om tried to get Meehan to comment more on whether a Spotify-focused phone was in the works, Meehan remained tight-lipped. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things at INQ pan out.

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Google Planning for Android to Be Very Social Mobile OS

Om Malik — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:00:57 +0000

[qi:gigaom_icon_google-android] Google is looking to make future versions of its Android operating system more social, said Andy Rubin, one of its creators and Google’s vice president of engineering (platforms), at an event in San Francisco earlier this morning. The event was held with T-Mobile USA to announce the launch of its newest Android-based phone, the MyTouch.

Frank Meehan, CEO of INQ Mobile, a speaker at our Mobilize 09 conference, must be really proud. He was the first to develop a device that specifically marries social networking to mobiles. And now everyone is doing it — including Google.
When I asked Rubin today why the self-described open platform doesn’t feature a native Facebook app, he said that social networking would be a key feature in future versions of Android. Google recently released Android’s latest version — code-named “Cupcake” — and will soon follow with Donut, Eclair and Flan. (What’s with the pastry fetish?)

Rubin said that Google doesn’t believe that applications should be silos and wants to help develop ones that deeply enmesh various mobile experiences — Internet, voice and location, for example. It’s taking a similar approach to social networking. “We are making a social push and we are looking at a more integrated experience,” he said. He declined to give any more details, including which future release of Android will carry these features, but I suspect we’ll be seeing them sooner than later.

The reasoning is pretty simple — that nature of communications is changing from just voice to many different modes. “Address book needs to be redefined,” Rubin said. Absolutely. As I wrote earlier, “Like email and instant messaging, Facebook (and soon Twitter) are what we use to stay in touch with our friends, colleagues and family.”

Anyway, to make a long story short (or is it too late for that?), someday there will be a Facebook app for Android that is made by the Palo Alto-based social network and it’s going to be as good as the one it has on the iPhone.

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