Six Apart, the blogging software and service provider, has acquired SplashBlog. Six Apart have acquired the technology and development team including John Chaffee. Chaffee will lead the mobile group at Six Apart and will be responsible for integrating the SplashBlog wireless sync protocols and mobile technologies into the Six Apart product line.
Here's the official All About Symbian review of Symbian's "How Smartphones Work" book. Warning: the title's accurate, but it's not quite about what you think it's about...
Symbian have announced some interesting 2005 and Q4, 2005 figures. Almost 34 million smartphones running Symbian OS shipped in 2005, the fourth consecutive year in which shipments have grown by more than 100%. Over 10 million shipments were in Q4. Here's the full press release, which goes into a lot more detail.
Via Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia have invested four million Euros in graphics hardware designers Bitboys Oy. The sum hands Nokia 14% of the company, and values Bitboys at a tasty 28.5 million Euros. It's a nice investment given that back in November the N-Gage team were talking about dedicated 3D hardware appearing in 'the next generation of mobile gaming.'
Nokia and Sanyo have announced they are working together to form a new company that will leverage Sanyo's mid to high end CDMA phones with Nokia's low to mid range CDMA phones. With the CDMA markets offering different challenges to hardware manufacturers, this is a good move, and is reminiscent of how Sony and Ericsson sat down to work together. Operations of Sanyo/Nokia scheduled to commence in Q3 2006.
Sky By Mobile is a rich media applicaiton for Symban OS ownered who use Sky Bet or Sky Digital services. Alongside the electronic program guide with a look and feel that Sky owners will be familiar with, it also offers the latest news and sports from the respective Sky channels. It's freely available to users subscribed to two or more premium channels (or the Sky Bet service) at www.skybymobile.com.
One of the initial ‘bullet points’ of Series 60 was that it could be seen as a widely adopted platform (on top of the widely available Symbian OS) across the market, with Nokia licensing to other manufacturers, such as Siemens, Sendo, Samsung and Panasonic. That strategy seems to have been diluted (as have Siemens and Sendo) but today’s announcement is that one of the world’s largest carriers, Vodafone, is pushing Series 60 as a ‘preferred device software platform.’ Which is a nice public acknowledgement of the same plan, but tweaked slightly to put an onus on the carriers.
Forum Nokia has announced the first few members of its Forum Nokia Champion reward program. The Forum Nokia Champion reward program is an invitation-only program that honors Forum Nokia members for their activities and contributions to Forum Nokia and the mobile industry. Benefits include rights to the title, showcasing their achievements in Forum Nokia channels and twice yearly meetings.
Symbian have now provided confirmation of yesterday's news of the Freescale reference design and reduced license fees. The new license fee introduces a new model of either a fraction of the trade price of devices shipping (i.e. a proportion or revenue) or scalable pricing that reduces the cost as more devices are shipped over a one year period (i.e. a more complex version of the current model). The new prices apply to Symbian OS 9 shipments from July.
According to this Reuters story Symbian is planning to develop a reference design using a single chip solution with US chip maker Freescale. This follows similar reference design in partnership with Intel and Texas Instruments. Reference designs are aimed at lowering development times and cost for Symbian phones. Additionally the reports states that Symbian, as expected, will be lowering its licensee fees. The official details of these announcements will likely be made at 3GSM. Read on for more.
Symbian have announced a mobile email validation program to promote best practice for push email solutions. In practise this means Symbian will be working with vendors to insure their solutions have the best possible user experience and functionality on Symbian OS.
Sony Ericsson are delaying the launch of the P990 to focus more resources on the M600i due to 'operator interest' in the M600i announced today. Read on...
The key to mobile serices to many companies is how to get to "Step 3: Profit" as fast as possible. Up till now the only effective route is using reverse SMS services via the operator, but budding entrepeneurs may be interested to read that Paypal is setting up a start-up, tentatively called PayPal Mobile. More at Finextra and MocoNews.
Looking to expand it's install base, and improve the product, Dallas based Quickoffice have taken on some venture captial funding from Mayfield Fund, Shepherd Ventures and Advantage Capital Partners. Full press release follows.
