Since OS 3.0 came through, one of the key features I was expecting was the ability to connect the iPhone/iPod TOuch to external local devices and use it as a stylish sexy controller. Yet, once again, it seems that Apple is failing on adding properly a new feature to his OS (follow my eyes, think Push notifications, copy/paste…).
I’ve been looking for the appropriate API entry points for months and yet apart from the unclead EAAccessory class and the Peer-to-Peer bluetooth gaming feature, nothing has shown up. Even more after digging the question it seems that the iPhone BT stack implementation is reduced to the absolute minimum.
A project, btstack, has been started to fill in this need, but it seems that this only work on jailbroken phones…
Yet who wouldn’t want to see this kind of apps pop in on the iPhone ?
This means that BT accessories will have to be made specially for the iPhone using probably CSR’s dev kit announced a few days ago. So new devices will probably start to pop up in the next 6 to 9 months, but let’s be honest, do I need to change my gadgets AGAIN to have them supported by the iPhone now ? This sounds like a bad joke…
A phone looks fairly simple from an end-user prospective. Basically it’s a tool to give call. Well, at least it was… since now the device we hold in our pocket are more close to a PDA merged with a camera than to a phone. The consequence is that it has become the placeholder to the some of the most important contents for the end user:
Personal communication (SMSs/MMSs) – Kids even write down their SMS exchange on paper sheets to save them and declare their love or break up through SMS!
Pictures – cameras are getting better and better (8Mp and increasing), the phone is replacing the compact digital camera
Videos – the first HD phone was released and 2010 is going the year of HD in the phones thanks to the various upcoming chipsets such as Nvidia’s Tegra
Address Book – still at the core of your phone. Slowly being replaced or rather duped by Facebook, this simple function is critical and yet so badly handled on our various devices
A lot has been going on lately in that space since at Steek we announced our Mobile offering, Gemalto has acquiredO3SIS to enter the business, Newbay and Voxmobili have been expanding and Funambol should be reaching profitability this year thanks to company such as Zyb or Mobyko using its SyncML backend to power their services.There are also a huge set of small players such as ClickOva or Pleex focusing on J2ME clients on handsets.
The space is crowded, and yet few operators have yet to start to deploying backup solutions that go beyond the legacy SIM Backup functionality. Yet most of those are still very focused on the Address Book and do not integrate in the devices core the way they should to deliver a proper “Save, Share and Play” experience.
I thinks we are going to see some pretty interesting moves in the near future since the end-users are asking for solutions and most operators are now offering online drives services to their end-user (and Steek has been providing those solutions to lots of them), it sounds natural that they add the mobile to the equation in a convergent and homogenous offering.
JM and I put up this little video yesterday showing a few demos on Steek Mobile for Smartphones and how we bring the Save, Share and Play experience to those devices, hope you enjoy it !
Pretty funny service from AT&T called Video Share that lets you share during a phone call video either live from your mobile or stored in its memory, some kind of half-duplex 3G visio … only works on 4 handsets yet I love the thought!
JaJah quietly launched a few days ago a new service called “GoJaJah” currently only limited to bearers of an italian mobile.
The service basically uses the Funambol technology (SyncML solution provider) to synchronize your address book to the GoJajah backend, detects your current location and adds to each of your contacts calling cards the appropriate local Jajah VoIP phone number making it a real no-brainer to use Jajah service in the smartest possible way (and letting you save money on long-distance calls).
This is probably the most impressive use-case of address book synchronization and enrichment – watch out as the service goes mainstream !
Finally got the Palm Pre SDK (hurray) and got to play with the emulator and write the first hello world, this device really looks promising and it’s so exciting to see Palm back in the business. For the record, my first handheld device was a Palm III in 1998, and since then Palm devices have progressively lost their appeal… But now it seems i cant’ wait for the Pre to reach us in Europe with its GSM version !
On the left a screenshot of the emulator with browser pointed to this blog.
That’s really big news, Flash 10 is coming for real on Android mobile phones. The HTC Hero will be the first one featuring a native Flash Player 10. I’m pretty anxious to see how it’s really going to come out, and especially hot the tons of flash content such as rich websites or casual games are going to adapt and feel like on a mobile. HTC Hero is due July 15th.
Check out the video below to see the official Adobe announce.
This is also big news as it waves goodbye to the Flash Lite initiative Adobe kinda failed at delivering (outside of Japan at least) which was supposed to be a mobilized and light version of Flash. Now they seem to be willing to focus on providing native deep integration of their player within their OS. How it’s going to impact application development is yet another question but if they can bring the Air framework along this is really going to change the face of the market…
Last but not least, it’s now official, Android gets multitouch!
Some of you might already know it but I joined Steek to lead the Mobile division. While most of our work at Steek is still under the radar, I wanted to show you a sneak peek of something we have been working on for a few weeks : the “Steek Mobile Share” on Blackberry.
Check out the official blog post and a couple of pics showing how easy and secure we can make mobile sharing be.
Amazing application – I especially love the “offline” mode where you can pin content to your mobile for further use, cant’ wait to have that on my iPhone or BlackBerry !
Congrats to Streamezzo for this fund raising happening in tough times.
This round of funding will assist Streamezzo in expanding its international sales and marketing infrastructure, in consolidating its presence in China as well as in bolstering its leadership position in the mobile application arena. The new investment will facilitate, among other activities, to expand its current product and service offerings, as well as to support its developer’s ecosystem with enhanced solutions meeting the ever growing demand of technology enabling to easily create and massively deploy innovative rich mobile applications.
I’m sure that Innovacom will be a terrific partner and that the latest changes inside Streamezzo are pointing the company in the right direction. As you know I co-founded Kamayo, a rich media agency sold to Streamezzo in 2007 and as such I know how unique their technology and know-how is solving the issue of addressing massive amounts of mobile phones in a homogenous way.
Can’t wait too see how the business and use cases will grow for them !
