Monday saw some consolidation in the industry supplying these capabilities for low-end phones, with Swiss handset software company Myriad Group hoovering up Synchronica, the UK-based mobile messaging firm, for around £24m ($38m). The result, they say, is the world’s biggest mobile social messaging firm.

Both companies do a lot of business with carriers, supplying white label software that those operators can then preinstall on handsets and brand as they wish. Although it also helps carriers build Android apps, one of Myriad’s core services is in providing simple tools to let even cheap phones hook into social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Synchronica’s forte is in mobile messaging, again allowing non-data-enabled devices to work with push email and social networks.

This deal will create a powerhouse in the rapidly growing sector of mobile-social convergence,” Myriad CEO Simon Wilkinson said in a statement. “It will establish a global service organisation serving over 100 carriers and 25 [manufacturers] around the world. At a stroke, it increases the addressable base for our award-winning product portfolios to over 1.8 billion subscribers with pre-installation of our products in over 100 million new devices each year.”

Those are big figures, and if you look at the histories of the two companies that’s no surprise.

Myriad was formed in 2009 through the merger of Esmertec and Purple Labs, a big name in the early days of mobile Linux development. Purple Labs had already absorbed the mobile team from French handset maker Sagem and bought in the handset client software division of Openwave (the one that’s suing Apple and RIM over patents). Crucially, the Openwave deal brought in the Openwave Browser (now called the Myriad Browser) which has been installed on 2.5 billion low-end devices.

Now add to that Synchronica’s widely-used push messaging, synchronization and backup software. Synchronica has made plenty of acquisitions of its own – most recently of Nokia’s messaging business and Neustar’s instant messaging portfolio – and the result is the kind of subscriber base Wilkinson’s talking about.

Operator branded software the norm… for now

The nature and price of the Myriad-Synchronica deal (bear in mind that last year’s Nokia buy alone was worth $25 million) speaks volumes about the future of operator-branded handset software. It’ll stay the norm on very cheap devices for some time yet… but anyone jumping onto the smartphone bandwagon gets to choose their own apps — they don’t need preinstalled stuff. And smartphones are gradually taking over even that low end of the market.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that operators are giving up their fight to be the intermediaries of the mobile software world. Myriad and Synchronica’s customer base includes ATT Verizon, Vodafone, Telefónica, Orange, T-Mobile (DT), América Móvil, NTT Docomo and many others, and it’ll be doing good business for a while yet.

I’ve asked for further details of how Synchronica’s product line will fit in with what Myriad already provides, but it’s certain that the combined operation will continue targeting emerging markets in places such as Africa and Asia.

(On a related note, Openwave seems to be getting out of the product game itself, selling off its remaining ‘mediation’ and messaging products to Marlin Equity Partners. The company said on Monday that it will embark on “a multi-pronged strategy to realize the value of our unique patent portfolio”, so it looks like RIM and Apple may soon be joined by other suit victims.)

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The news comes on the heels of a separate announcement that shows it’s not just Microsoft on the receiving end of licensing fees at the moment: it has also inked a deal with Openwave (NSDQ: OPWV) so that it can have access to the mobile tech company’s patent portfolio.

The Huawei deal is still being negotiated, according to Victor Xu, director of marketing for Huawei Devices, who confirmed as much to the Guardian.

When the deal is completed, Huawei would become the eleventh OEM that builds Android devices to sign deals with Microsoft. The list includes both those who only make Android devices, as well as those who also develop handsets based on Microsoft’s own Windows Phone OS, the two biggest being Samsung and HTC.

Separately, the Openwave deal makes Microsoft the first licensee for Openwave’s 200 patents, which the company says relate to smart devices and cloud-based technologies. Openwave is currently suing RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) for infringing on these same patents, so getting one big company on board could see negotiations advancing with the other two parties.

Microsoft’s deal with Huawei raises a couple of interesting questions about what we might see next from the Chinese handset maker:

» WP7 devices? Microsoft has been using its patent deals to collect revenue on Android devices — some believe that Microsoft could be making even more from its Android licenses than it is from licenses for its own OS, with one guesstimate at $444/million per year. But perhaps as importantly, it has been leveraging its Android negotiations to promote its own OS.

Most recently, Microsoft’s licensing deal with Samsung for Android devices also included detail of broad support for WP7. Some have speculated that this WP7 support could have even been used by Samsung to drive down its Android fee.

Considering this fact, is it possible that we might also start to see Huawei making Windows Phone devices in the future, too, as a way of defraying the cost of the Android coverage? So far, Huawei has said that it is watching WP7 with interest, but it has yet to announce any devices using the OS.

» Farewell, cheap Android devices? The fact that Android OEMs have not had to pay Google (NSDQ: GOOG) any royalties for Android has definitely helped them discount the phones and continue to get some kind of margin on the devices, and Huawei has been one of the strongest promoters of that business model. But how will that be impacted by a license fee that could be as much as $15 per device? (That’s the amount thought to be paid by Samsung.)

Huawei wants to break into the top-five smartphone makers, but it will be harder for a new entrant to achieve that if they have to price their devices closer to those of their more established rivals.

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With an ever-growing number of consumers walking around with video cameras on their mobile phones, Klip hopes to become the go-to app for shooting, uploading and sharing videos with friends. With a simple interface for connecting to networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Klip makes it easy to reach friends and family where they already are.

Of course, Klip is far from alone in the social/mobile video sharing game. There are any number of startups seeking to own the nascent market and become the Instagram of video. Among others, there’s Socialcam (recently spun out from Justin.tv), BlipSnips, Tout, Vibop, Viddy, Vlix and Vloggo.

Klip’s big differentiator is an ultrafast adaptive-streaming technology that enables users to quickly scroll through elements of a video without having to play the whole thing. It also has a dynamic hashtag system, which lets users create and track different categories attached to videos that are uploaded. And, like most competitors, it also lets users tag their friends in videos, make comments and favorite videos that were uploaded by friends and contacts.

For an idea of how it works, check out this promotional video from Klip:

One other advantage Klip has is its founder: The company was created in April 2011 by serial entrepreneur Alain Rossman, the former chairman of Vudu (before the company was sold to Wal-Mart) and OpenWave, among others. Altogether, Rossman has founded five startups, three of which went public and two of which were acquired. This latest venture has raised $2 million in funding from Rossman and Matrix Partners.

That said, it’s a very crowded market. Klip has very cool technology, but it will also need consumer adoption to make it worthwhile for most users. With a number of competitors already vying for consumers’ attention when it comes to sharing their videos on social networks, Klip has a tough road ahead.

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Stop me if you’re heard this one before: a mobile company that’s not making very much money on its own is looking to cash in through the patent system. In this particular case, Openwave is asserting five patents that cover a number of widely used mobile concepts, such as a patent that it said “enables data to be accessed or shared by different devices such as mobile handsets or computers.” Its complaint lists the iPhone, iPad, the BlackBerry Curve 9330, and the BlackBerry Playbook as infringing devices.

Openwave “approached both of these companies (Apple and RIM) numerous times in an attempt to negotiate a license of our technology with them and did not receive a substantive response,” said Ken Denman, Openwave’s CEO, in a press release.

It’s not clear why Openwave is not going after any Android companies, who have been under attack from Apple and Microsoft over patents related to their phones. The section of Openwave’s complaint that lists current licensees for the patents was treated as confidential information.

However, in a statement to mocoNews Openwave confirmed that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and other Android partners do not have licenses to their patents, as “Openwave licenses its technology to communication service providers,” the company said. The company said it had approached other companies besides Apple and RIM, but had nothing to say regarding the nature of those other conversations. Google had no immediate comment on whether it had been approached by Openwave.

Over the past two years Openwave has been filing patent applications in hopes of cashing in on its intellectual property, Denman said in a letter to investors posted on the company’s Web site. Before it could file the lawsuits against Apple and RIM, it had to pay another company–Myriad–$12 million in cash “to release any claim to our patents,” suggesting that ownership of the patents could be disputed by the defendants.

Apple and RIM have gotten to know the folks at the ITC very well this year, with cases involving Kodak, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung, HTC, and others having been argued before the organization this year.

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The complaint lists Apple’s iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch, iPad and iPad 2, and RIM’s Blackberry Curve 9330 and Blackberry PlayBook as infringing on five Openwave patents. Those are, according to Openwave:

• Patent that generally allows a user to use e-mail applications on a mobile device when the network is unavailable – such as when a user is on an airplane.
• Patent that generally allows the mobile device to operate seamlessly, and securely, with a server over a wireless network.
• Patent that generally allows access to updated versions of applications on mobile devices.
• Patent that generally allows consumers to experience an improved user experience in navigating through various pages of information without delay.
• Patent that enables data in the cloud to be accessed or shared by different devices such as mobile handsets or computers.

The suit asks the ITC to bar the import and sale of the accused devices. In a statement, Openwave CEO Ken Denman said it ultimately wants licensing fees for the technology:

Openwave invented technologies that became foundational to the mobile Internet. We believe that these large companies should pay us for the use of our technologies, particularly in light of the substantial revenue these companies have earned from devices that use our intellectual property. Before filing these complaints, we approached both of these companies numerous times in an attempt to negotiate a license of our technology with them and did not receive a substantive response.

Neither Apple or RIM were immediately available for comment.

Thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user The.Comedian

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With all the excitement surrounding the relatively recent wave of non-relational – otherwise known as “NoSQL” – databases, it can be hard to separate the hype from the reality. There’s a lot of talk, but how much NoSQL action is there in the real world? In this series, we’ll take a look at some real-world NoSQL deployments.

Openwave delivers mediation and messaging products for ISPs and telecom service providers. It has adopted Cassandra as the basis for its next generation messaging platform, which will go live in the second half of 2011. Like HBase, Cassandra is heavily influenced by the Google BigTable model, but also uses concepts from Amazon’s Dynamo distributed key-value store. Cassandra was first developed by Facebook, and has since seen action at Cloudkick (recently acquired by Rackspace), Digg and Twitter.

Openwave’s next generation platform must support geographic redundancy, massive scalability and high availability. It needed to be able to distribute databases redundantly across multiple data centers and handle large customer datasets – varying from hundreds of terabytes to petabytes, and supporting thousands of transactions per second from each customer.

Openwave settled on Cassandra after evaluating other non-relational databases including CouchDB and Voldemort. Cassandra was selected because of its multi-data center scalability and reliability.

Moving from the relational world to Cassandra required unlearning a lot of traditional techniques, particularly with respect to data modelling. In Cassandra, the data modeling is determined by the nature of the application queries rather than the nature of the data. Cassandra “Super Columns” essentially determine which child records will be accessible from a master record. Selecting the correct Super Column structure will therefore determine which queries can be supported. Furthermore, while relational data modeling starts with the elimination of redundant data, in Cassandra one would normally create multiple “Column Families” – roughly equivalent to an RDBMS table – to support the various questions that the application might ask. For instance, one Column Family might store sales grouped by customer, while another might store sales grouped by product.

“It was tempting to apply relational techniques that we know and love to Cassandra,” said Utpal Thakrar, product manager at Openwave. “It simply does not work. Performance gets impacted dramatically if the data model is ill-designed.”

Like most of the non-relational database alternatives, Cassandra does not support the strong multi-object transactions found in the relational world. Cassandra supports “tuneable consistency” though, which allows the application to trade off between speed and consistency. For instance, an operation might choose the strictest consistency level, ensuring that all users of the database see the changes immediately. Another operation may choose a lower level of consistency, achieving higher throughput but permitting temporary inconsistencies as the changes are propagated through the system. “Applications that require transactional support have to be redesigned to play within the limitations of tunable consistency that Cassandra offers”, said Thakrar, “When in Rome, do as Cassandra does’ was the motto we had to preach throughout the organization.”

Moving from RDBMS to Cassandra has not been a trivial, and commercial support from Cassandra vendor Riptano (now DataStax) has been critical,” said Thakrar. “We have certainly run into issues, but are resolving them quickly with Riptano’s help.”

To learn more about the factors driving big data and optimal strategies for solving it, including from Hadoop, NoSQL and MPP database leaders, come to our Big Data conference held on March 23 in NYC.

Guy Harrison is a director of research and development at Quest Software, and has over 20 years of experience in database design, development, administration, and optimization. He can be found on the internet at www.guyharrison.net, on e-mail at guy.harrison@quest.com and is @guyharrison on twitter.

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The key to generating value from telecom data networks is the ability to understand the context of the users on those networks, what they are doing and what they want, Openwave Systems CEO Ken Denman told the GigaOM Mobilize conference today. Denman also said that in his view, the term “mobile” will cease to mean anything in terms of describing a specific industry segment, since “everything is mobile and everything’s connected, all the time,” if not now, then in the near future.

The opening slide of the Openwave CEO’s presentation quoted Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg as saying that in 10 years, there will be more than 50 billion devices connected to the web. Most of these, Denman said, will be machines talking to other machines, or informing users and other monitoring systems that they are turning themselves on or off, and so on. But there will also be millions and millions of always-connected mobile users, he said, and understanding the way they are using data networks is crucial for service providers.

On a mobile network, “context is king,” Denman said. For a network provider, the ability to know that a specific user is female, that she lives in New York, that she uses a variety of social networks and services, and that she is outside a movie theater can be very valuable — because the provider can then make decisions about what kinds of content to send to that user, and offers or features she might be interested in. Then “the user can choose the most relevant content to her in a way she wants, so she’s more in control of her experience,” Denman said. That means a better user experience, which in turn means more revenue for the operator.

In particular, the Openwave CEO said, providers can offer services such as dynamic bandwidth management that improve the quality of the experience for users by adjusting the bit rate of the content they are sending according to network conditions, or they can offer demand-based pricing and bundling features. They can also target specific offers to a user directly, he said; for example, noticing that a user is close to their data maximum for the month and then alerting them, along with an offer to buy more data or upgrade their account, instead of forcing them to make a call and sit on hold with a customer representative.

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