Today, we launched phase one of our new responsive site design, and the changes we’re introducing to GigaOM and paidContent will ensure that doesn’t happen to you here. At a time when readers are using so many different devices, one big challenge for digital publishers is retaining the quality and consistency of the reading experience not only across devices but also across different operating systems and browsers.

Now, whether you’re on a desktop or a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, our sites will automatically adjust, rendering the content in the way that best fits that particular environment. We know, for example, that it’s harder to hit a target on the page with your finger than with a mouse, and so if you’re reading us on a tablet, we’ve enlarged the target to make it easier to strike. Similarly, rather than try to cram our entire site onto a 4-inch smartphone display, we’ve removed some content from the mobile view so as to focus the presentation of the most essential information. In all cases, the site simply readjusts to fit the real estate on the screen that you’re on at the time.

Below, you can see how the presentation of an actual story changes as the screen shrinks.

Those aren’t the only improvements that we’ve made. Among the other things you’ll notice about GigaOM and paidContent:

• More curation: If you’re time-stretched, our new “Must Reads” section tells you what you absolutely shouldn’t miss.
• Easier sharing: We’ve made it easier to share not only whole stories and also pieces of content within stories.
• Better performance: Because the pages are lighter weight, they will load faster.
• Crisper display: We’ve added blur-resistant icons and new text-size controls, so there’s no more squinting to read text or straining to hit a small target when navigating the site.
• A cleaner look: We’ve ditched a lot of widgets that had simply built up over the years but no longer serve their original purpose.

For phase one of the redesign, we’ve intentionally simplified the look and feel of the site — it’s more akin to updating the plumbing in a house than redoing the facade. But without reliable plumbing, a house isn’t very habitable. These upgrades pave the way for subsequent phases of this redesign over the next few months that will include more changes in how we present our content.

Finally, I wanted to thank the fantastic team that has been slaving away on the redesign for last several months: our head of product management Raza Zaidi; engineers Casey Bisson, Matt Batchelder, Zach Tirrell and Jamie Poitra; designers Stephen Engert, Arlo Jamrog and Jonathan Koshi; and our product guys Adam Kazwell and Ian Kennedy. They’ve worked long hours — and tested countless iterations in QA — and we think the results are great.

We’d love to know what you think. If you have suggestions or comments (positive or negative), please leave them in the comment thread in this post.

Thanks again for being loyal readers.

Images courtesy of PlaceIt by Breezi.

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Qualcomm Foundation, a non-profit arm of the mobile chip company, hopes that it can incentivize scientists and developers to take advantage of this shift by building a handheld machine aimed at consumers that can diagnose 15 medical ailments based on sensors in the device. The inspiration for the contest was the Star Trek tricorder, and the contest registration extends until January with the prize being determined in 2015. There’s a second prize running in conjunction with that prize for medical sensors as Mark Winters, the senior director of the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE and Nokia Sensing X Challenge explains in this video below.

Winters spoke with me at our Mobilize 2012 show in San Francisco last week, and shared details of the tricorder X prize as well as some of the current research in medical sensing technology that may one day make it into a tricorder or even your smartphone. Enjoy.

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The dream of electrifying rural areas in the developing world has long existed, but the proliferation of the mobile phone is driving many of the newer efforts to provide simple solar solutions to these parts of the world. Mobile phones, after all, are the original “off-the-grid” solution, in that their introduction has suddenly made it possible to provide phone service without installing extensive wired telephone infrastructure. But even cell phones need power.

To read the rest of my column about mobile and off-grid solar in the developing world, check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

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Last week, it took out of beta its One Number service, which allows customers to extend the voice and SMS capabilities or their phones to any PC under a single unified phone number. On Monday, it revealed that none other than CounterPath, the developer of the innovative over-the-top VoIP application Bria, was powering the service.

Rogers, however, isn’t simply re-branding the Bria Android and iPhone clients. It’s doing something far more sophisticated. It’s using the underlying Bria technology to power a web-based portal that can make and receive phone calls and send text messages to any Canadian number as well as video chat with other Rogers One Number users – all at no charge and with no penalty to a customer’s voice minute or SMS caps. It may sound a lot like Google Voice, but the magic is in hidden in the network. Rogers is integrating CounterPath’s technology into its next-generation service delivery architecture – which in telco jargon is known as IP Multimedia Subsystem, or IMS – creating a bridge between its legacy circuit-switched voice networks and CounterPath’s session initiation protocol (SIP)-based VoIP and video services platform.

The result isn’t a semi-isolated web service like Google Voice, but one that makes PC calling an extension of Rogers’ ordinary mobile voice services. Customers can transfer calls mid-conversation between their phones and PCs and vice versa. IMS negotiates the tricky hand-off between circuit-switched and SIP-based calls in the heart of the network. And once a call migrates to the PC, Rogers no longer counts it against a customer’s monthly minute allotment. Rogers posted a video that provides a basic outline and demo of One Number’s capabilities:

Rogers isn’t the first operator to pal up with an over-the-top voice provider. Verizon Wireless shocked the industry by announcing a partnership with Skype in 2010. But that deal was more about giving preferential treatment to – and presumably creating a revenue-sharing agreement  with — a particular VoIP provider, not directly integrating Verizon’s phone numbers into the Skype service. Many operators also have experimented with call forwarding and simultaneous ring services bridging their wireless and wireline voice services.

But Rogers is going much further. It’s divorcing the mobile phone number from the mobile phone, making it just another IP service that can be carried across networks, applications and platforms. It will be interesting to see how far Rogers expands One Number. Tablets and connected TVs seem like the logical next step, but it’s not hard to imagine Rogers tapping into other Internet companies’ APIs to stick its ‘mobile’ service into anything with a user interface. Free calling from your Facebook account may be just around the corner.

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The Big Three and their overseas rivals all converged at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show and Detroit Auto Show to show off their efforts, as GigaOM reported at the time.

The U.S. Department of Transportation, which hosted a distracted driving summit in 2009 and 2010, did not hold the event last year, a sign that the issue is not a priority, which has emboldened automakers to forge ahead, according to the Journal. Update: A DOT spokeswoman said it is too early to say if the agency will host the summit, which has taken place in the fall, this year. But she said the agency remains focused on the problem of distracted driving.

This in-car infotainment deluge comes despite the fact that a driver who texts (or is otherwise distracted) is 23 times more likely to crash, according to the National Transportation Board, which posts such data to its distraction.gov website. Other distractions include reading onboard GPS systems, adjusting the radio or watching a video.

While the consumer electronics and software companies at these events were careful to stress their reliance on hands-free operation, the fact remains that the automobile is looking more and more like a home entertainment center. The Journal said the automakers have used these hands-free features to say that using in-dash systems is safer than manipulating their cell phones to make calls or text.

As Michael Sprague, the marketing director at Kia Motors’ North American division, told the Journal: 

Consumers are going to continue to drive with phones and all we can do as a manufacturer is to provide what the consumers are asking for and make it as safe as possible.

This contention between infotainment and safety will not go away anytime soon. Critics complain that what the automakers and their consumer electronics allies are doing is making it easier to drive while distracted. If the federal government won’t act, the states may. Massachusetts, for example, is getting closer to banning all use of handheld cell phones by drivers. New York is also pondering such a move. Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia have already banned texting while driving. Thirty states (and Washington, D.C.) ban all cell phone use by new drivers. The Governors Highway Safety Association keeps a list of distracted driving statutes by state. And New York state is about to hold a hearing on distracted driving.

It doesn’t take a huge leap to see that as these new gizmo-packed cars hit the road, the potential for more distracted drivers will rise. Look for more scrutiny from safety advocacy groups and the states, if not the federal government, going forward.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user mroach

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Apple’s 37 million fourth quarter iPhone shipments were a far cry from the market leaders, however. Nokia still ruled the roost with 113.5 million handset shipments, while Samsung edged closer to grabbing the top spot with a 20 percent increase compared to the previous year, to a total of 97.6 million units shipped. Samsung succeeded by growing its smartphone sales, but also by increasing its feature phone shipment numbers in an otherwise soft market for those devices.

While Apple was the biggest gainer percentage-wise during the quarter, LG suffered the biggest drop,with a negative 42.2 percent change compared to the same period in 2010. Its total shipments were at 17.7 million for the year, which is on par with 2007 levels. LG definitely felt the hit of the waning feature phone market and was unable to do much to impress consumers with its smartphones, either.

Apple also ranked third overall in terms of  mobile phone shipments throughout the whole calendar year thanks to its fourth quarter results, with 93.2 iPhone shipments and year-over-year growth of 96.2 percent.

IDC predicts that the mobile phone market will continue to experience double-digit growth, despite only seeing 11.1 percent growth year-over-year in 2011, versus 18.7 percent growth between 2009 and 2010.

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In a new study of 1,000 adults conducted earlier this month, Pew found that 38 percent of mobile users called a friend while in store for buying advice while 24 percent of cell phone users used their phone to obtain product reviews on line. And 25 percent of adult cell phone users looked up prices online for products in store in attempt to find the best deal online and in other stores. Altogether, 52 percent of all adult cell owners relied on their phone for one of these purposes and 33 percent specifically turned to their phone for online information while shopping inside a store.

The numbers are consistent with a survey Deloitte did prior to the holiday season, which found that 27 percent of US smartphone users said they planned to use their smartphone while in-store for holiday shopping.

Pew said that mobile consumers 18-49 are much more likely to use their phones for online product reviews than older cell phone users. And urban and suburban users are about twice as likely to look up online reviews from their phone than rural cell phone owners. Non-white and more educated consumers were more likely to use their phone for in-store research.

Of the people who conducted online price research, Pew found that 35 percent still bought the product in the store while 19 percent purchased online. Another 8 percent went to another store to buy and 37 percent decided not to buy at all.

This last piece of data shows the challenge for retailers, who lost about 5 percent of transactions that began with online price research, even though they have the customer in-store. That’s something that retailers have been increasingly sensitive about, especially with promotions like Amazon’s holiday offer to knock off $5 from certain products if users checked prices through Amazon. But the data also show how retailers can fight back. They obviously need to be aware of prices online, and they may look at ways to lower prices or match online prices in-store to remain competitive. They can also look at advertising online and through price-shopping apps such as ShopSavvy, so users can get routed to that retailer’s online store instead of its competitors. Or they can pick off competitors’ customers who price shop through apps.

ShopSavvy and RedLaser have also started to institute scan-and-buy options, so users can scan a product from the aisle and buy them right  from online retailers, having their purchases sent home to them. That can be another challenge for a local store but also offers a way for retailers to still compete for that transaction if they price competitively. Aislebuyer and PayPal have been talking up similar kinds of options for retailers to offer buying from an aisle. Having that kind of an option may soon be a necessity for retailers.

The challenge is still considerable for retailers of all sizes. Having consumers walk in with connected computers in their pocket means many of them can find a potentially better deal online or in another store. But retailers should be thinking about how to satisfy their customers’ shifting buying patterns. Saving a couple dollars may be enough to abandon a local store, but if that retailer can provide more convenience, better in-store service or the ability to haggle on some products, a consumer may still want to buy immediately. It’s definitely going to be harder for physical retailers in this new mobile-enhanced shopping era but there’s still ways to compete as buyers get a lot smarter.

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But what if all of this changed? What if consumers actually enjoyed signing contracts? What if carriers just gave away phones — all of them —  for free?

What do consumers get?

Carriers need to rethink the current model of phone ownership. It’s not working for them or consumers. So let’s propose a new one: phone leasing. It would work like this. A consumer can get a free phone, any model they would like, and can keep it for 12 months. No charge aside from their monthly bill. If there are any issues with the phone, they would most likely still be covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. And any reasonable issues not covered by the manufacturer’s warranty would be covered by the carrier for free.

What’s the catch?

The carrier owns the phone, and it must be returned after the 12 months is up. Moreover, instead of signing a two-year contract, consumers would have to sign a four- to five-year one. But, and this is a big but, when a consumer gives that 12-month-old phone back to the carrier, they’ll get a brand-new one of their choice — every single year of the contract.

What do carriers get out of this model?

Three things: More phone “sales” — lowering the cost of phone acquisition will lead to more contracts; longer contract means more customer loyalty; and leasing instead of selling phones means the phones can be resold once the 12 months is up (a typical iPhone goes for $300-400 on Craigslist). So instead of a carrier purchasing a phone for, say, $650 from a manufacturer and only getting $200 at retail from a consumer, losing $450 in the process, they’ll be able to resell that phone after 12 months for $300-400. This process will be repeated until the contract ends.

But why would a carrier go this route when the churn rate (the percentage of consumers leaving) is so low? More profit. Smartphone adoption is growing, but it would be growing much faster if smartphones were free. Moreover, carriers are basically competing with the same phones (barring T-Mobile, which still doesn’t have the iPhone) and very similar monthly plans. Adding such a plan would be a game-changer that would provide a worthy competitive advantage. Lastly, churn may be low — Verizon, for instance, reported 1.1 percent among 88 million contract subscribers. That equates to 88,000 people, or nearly half the population of Richmond, Va., leaving every quarter. With each subscriber worth $54.89 of revenue, $4.8 million worth of churn walks away each quarter.

Why not prepaid instead?

Of course the prepaid phone market is an option, but for most consumers it is not a tantalizing one. Part of the reason could be due to the lack of cachet; the perception remains that prepaid users don’t have good enough credit to get a contract. But an even greater reason is the lack of cutting-edge phones the prepaid market offers. For instance, the iPhone (as well as many popular phones) isn’t available as a prepaid option. And for carriers, on average, prepaid has a higher churn rate and creates less revenue.

Carriers have little choice but to shake up the cellphone market. It’s ripe for a revolution.

John S. Wilson is a freelance writer who focuses on technology, politics and health policy. He writes for NewsOne, The Loop 21, and Mediaite, and can be reached on Twitter: @johnwilson

Image courtesy of Flickr user jason.lengstorf.

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The joint venture company, leveraging the six investing companies’ strong backgrounds in cellular communication technology and vast experience in application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) design and foundry manufacturing, will develop feature-rich, small-size, low-power-consumption semiconductor products equipped with modem functionality. The joint venture company will focus on developing products for LTE and LTE-Advanced mobile communication standards. The products will be sold in markets globally.

This means these companies are confident they can build a better chip than industry giants such as Qualcomm, but it’s also an admission they must work together if they don’t want to miss the wireless opportunity. That’s an opportunity chip firms can’t afford to ignore.

These companies will establish the joint venture by the end of March 2012. It looks like they will integrate the application processors with the modem and other silicon on a system on a chip. Qualcomm is well-known for its mobile chip integration capabilities. Beyond Qualcomm, the announcement is a reminder of how mobile is redefining everything, including the staid world of chips, where former mortal enemies are now part of a joint venture.

The consortium is also a tactical admission by the Japanese that they alone don’t have the technical wherewithal to face the mobile onslaught being unleashed by U.S.-based companies such as Broadcom, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Google and Apple. Japanese handset makers are increasingly marginalized in the global market because of their own unique mobile ecosystem, which prevents them from achieving large economies of scale.

Mobile is not PC

Intel's mobile phone reference design.

When PCs and servers ruled the roost, Intel has a lock on the market thanks to its x86 architecture. It let AMD follow, but never let it lead, creating a dynamic for the industry that has led to a lack of innovation in hardware beyond the needs of the mass market. AMD pushed the envelope with innovations such as HyperTransport, and being the first to build 64-bit chips, but it was never able to outspend or out-compete Intel.

The mobile world is different. Chip firms start with the same basic ARM instruction set licensed by the British company of the same name, and then innovate from there. There are hundreds of ARM licensees in various segments of the market. Some companies integrate their application processors (the brains) with the radio (the voice) of the phone, while others use separate chips. Qualcomm, for example, is famous for integrating its Snapdragon processor with its radios, and does it well enough that it has become the top baseband chip vendor in the world. But this is a game anyone can play, because no one has locked down the license for the architecture like Intel had with x86.

Even Intel is seeking a baseband advantage, buying up Infineon’s wireless business in January so it had the radio component to sit next to its Atom chips. The jury is out on Intel making it in this competitive mobile world, but it can’t afford not to try. Meanwhile, formerly huge players, such as Texas Instruments, which exited the baseband business in 2008, seems to be losing the marketing battle with its OMAP line of chips. And players such as Nvidia (which bought its own mobile radio company) and Broadcom are seeking their entrée into the market as they realize the mobile device is going to be bigger than the PC ever was.

Back to DoCoMo & Co.

Apple's A5, manufactured by Samsung.

The news that NTT DoCoMo is eager to get in on the mobile game with some kind of joint venture is odd only in that an operator is leading the pack. However, Apple’s success with its A4 and A5 processors shows how deep vertical integration (owning everything from the chip to the app store) can profit a company, and Apple may also indicate why NTT DoCoMo is involved. Currently, Apple’s A5 chips are manufactured by Samsung, although Samsung’s rising prominence in the Android ecosystem has frayed the relationship. Perhaps NTT DoCoMo helps shield Samsung from the wrath of Apple as their co-opetition becomes more fierce.

And Samsung has long worked on radio chips to help it decrease its reliance on Qualcomm, so the idea that it’s part of this venture isn’t all that crazy. The new joint venture isn’t fully baked yet, but NTT DoCoMo said it will invest 450 million Japanese yen ($5.8 million USD) to establish a wholly owned subsidiary, called Communication Platform Planning Co., Ltd. headed by CEO Mitsunobu Komori. Komori is the EVP and CTO of DOCOMO. As the head of a chip platform and with the experience from being at mobile operator responsible for delivering some of the world’s most advanced handsets, he knows what consumers want, and clearly this joint venture is hoping it will deliver it.

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