Handset makers are increasingly looking to advanced integration of popular web services with their devices, to enhance the user experience and differentiate themselves from more generic webphones. And this is putting even more pressure on the manufacturers to soup up the power of their products, to support applications like YouTube video at top speeds. In this race, smaller vendors are often scoring points ahead of the giants, with RIM and even Taiwan’s ASUS claiming performance breakthroughs this week.

On the integrated web apps front, Hutchison/3 has gone as far as to set up a subsidiary, INQ, to work with software organizations like Facebook and YouTube to create optimized handsets, and RIM is also turning to this approach to strengthen its nascent consumer strategy, which is based on making the smartphone into the hub for the user’s ‘four screen’ internet (cellphone, landphone, PC and television).

First off, the BlackBerry maker has worked with social networking giant MySpace on an integrated version of its software, which promises the same sort of instant-response, push-based service that is familiar to business users of BlackBerry email.

The MySpace system will push social content, supporting a full messaging interface, real time status and mood updates, camera integration and optimized photo management, plus notification of new MySpace events like message and friend requests. In addition, MySpace will launch a new community page for BlackBerry users, offering access to content, videos, games, ringtones, skins and related features.

RIM’s web services message should be reinforced by results of recent tests carried out by online laboratory CNET. This ran a full length movie, TV episode and audio track on five high end phones, the iPhone 3G, BlackBerry Bold, Samsung Instinct, LG Dare and HTC/T-Mobile G1. All were equipped with a 4Gb MicroSD except the 8Gb iPhone and all were running on 3G networks. The Bold blew away the competition on download speeds, performing at 13.9Mbps for the movie and 9.59Mbps for audio. The G1 came in second, with ratings of 5.99Mbps and 5.08Mbps; iPhone was third with 5Mbps and 2.79Mbps; the Dare performed at 1.49Mbps and 1.31Mbps; and the Instinct scored 0.79Mbps and 0.74Mbps.

Meanwhile, the Taiwanese device community is seeking to move into the branded, high performance market, in the footsteps of role model HTC. ASUS has shown off a smartphone, the P565, which it says has the most powerful processor at 800MHz - the average in high end handsets is 500MHz. The product also features the Glide touch-driven user interface and runs Windows Mobile, with the Office Mobile suite of apps. It is geared to business users.

This device epitomizes how far the Taiwanese manufacturers have come from their roots as makers of cheap, white label products for midmarket operators. HTC is now one of the highest profile smartpone makers, with its top range, the Windows-based Touch, selling under its own brand. Now ASUS covets the same move to brand loyalty and higher margins. Its P565 is equipped with a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen, with HSDPA and Wi-Fi, plus a black leather case. Pricing has not yet been set.

By Joshua Martin, Senior Analyst, Yankee Group

How many times will that tired phrase grace news and blog headlines this week? Well, at least once and I’d venture to say quite a bit more as people wake up to realize the much ballyhooed Google mobile application update with voice search has finally launched.

Diminishing the need to key in searches manually (those small letter can be a killer), Google mobile provides location aware results for places nearby (with phone numbers one touch away), relevant websites, google images, and youtube videos. With the advent of universal voice search* (and really, can speech to e-mail be that far behind) will those married to their Blackberry’s finally be convinced to forgo that QWERTY?

Some of the reticent may buy iPhones, but by and large what the application will do is further cement Google as the search application for ALL iPhone users, and when you make money from advertising this is a good thing. Why would a user choose any other search tool until they offer something equal to or better than what Google has launched? Add in the aforementioned potential of voice to Gmail conversion (I’m hoping!) and suddenly more nails are being hammered into Yahoo’s coffin. Speaking of which, sorry to see you go Jerry. Rarely do we have a CEO with superpowers - no one had the ability to diminish shareholder value faster than you!

With rumors that Apple could be developing its own application for search, this is a shot across the bow for Google. No one will beat them on search. Not even Apple. There is one other factor to consider. This application demonstrates the power of a third party application but it is not fully integrated. Now, imagine how powerful voice search would be if it was baked into the operating system. Now if only Google had their own mobile operating system….

Could voice search be one of the killer apps for Android? Could Google have made the application available on the iPhone to demonstrate how great Android will be if and when such technology is incorporated into its very core? Only time will tell if Google will use such an application to build momentum for Android phones but in the interim they will simply have to be satisfied with further dominating search.

* A quick note that voice cannot be used to search contacts. Again, this is something that could potentially be addressed with an update but a feature I fully expect to be available when Google released voice search on Android.

What’s your take? Click here to leave a comment!

Last week we saw Microsoft seeking to resuscitate the ailing Windows Mobile with a far reaching partnership with LG. Now it is pushing to get more influential mobile allies into its clutches, and is trying to oust Google from a valuable search deal with Verizon Wireless. It has also finally confirmed that there will be an interim upgrade to its mobile OS, release 6.5, before the delayed version 7.0, in a bid to restore confidence in its platform.

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is revisiting its old strategy of pushing its OS and web services by getting close to operators rather than device makers. In August, Google was close to a deal with Verizon Wireless to get its search bar included as the default on the number one US operator’s handsets, often gaining a coveted home screen position, which significantly boost mobile web usage.

Now Microsoft is reported to be trying to gazump its rival, by offering Verizon a larger share of advertising revenue from searches and a guarantee of higher payments. Sources say Microsoft would guarantee payments to the carrier of $550m-$650m over five years, or twice what Google was offering. Microsoft would not just gain profile for its web services, and its own share of ad revenue, but is also looking to include deals for Verizon to carry more Windows Mobile devices, and put the OS at the heart of its smartphone strategy.

The combined deals are valued at $1bn, but the importance to Microsoft goes far beyond simple cash. Verizon Wireless putting Windows at the top of its portfolio would be a huge endorsement for the flagging smartphone OS, and the US cellco must seem like ready prey - it is under pressure to accelerate its moves into mobile web services and into open access, but without the expertise, or strong partners, to do this without significant risk; and though it has expressed interest in Android, it has made no commitments to the OS. Meanwhile, until the LTE phase, it cannot choose the other main alternative to Windows Mobile for high end mobile web devices, Symbian, since this is hardly present on CDMA platforms.

The search market is also very strategic to Microsoft in its fight with Google, and it made its most aggressive move earlier this year with a (failed) bid for Yahoo. Now it may be forced to go a more indirect route - ironically, the one Yahoo has been pursuing strongly itself, of picking off cellcos one by one to default on its search engine - in order to boost its measly share of the nascent mobile search market. This currently stands at 5%, compared to Google’s 61% and Yahoo’s 18%. Google recently called off an advertising partnership plan with Yahoo amid fear of regulatory probes.

Google is the default search partner for Sprint Nextel, and Yahoo for AT&T, the latter deal also a blow to the search leader, and making a Verizon win essential for US profile. T-Mobile works closely with Google since launching the first Android phone, G1.

For Verizon’s part, it appears to be tempted by Microsoft’s offer, and this reflects the sort of bartering that will become endemic across the mobile web world, with Google, Nokia, Apple and Microsoft fighting for pole position with the large cellcos. These operators will remain the primary channel for mobile web services and devices for many years, despite the impact of open access and direct-to-consumer offerings, and battles like this one show their continuing ability to influence the structure of the mobile value chain, even as they resist the pressure to become mere bitpipes.

Another boost for Microsoft’s LiveSearch came last week when Sun agreed to distribute the MSN toolbar with its Java runtime, replacing a 2005 agreement to bundle Google’s toolbar (the change only applies, so far, to the US and to IE users). Bloggers speculated that the move was a tit-for-tat action, since Google recently dropped Sun’s StarOffice from its Google Pack. Microsoft is slated to launch the final ‘Wave 3′ release of its Live services this week.

Meanwhile, Windows Mobile 6.5, which has been long rumoured, appears to be a reality. Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha, a close Microsoft partner, blew the cover recently and hinted at the interim upgrade for the current release 6.1. Now Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has confirmed there will be a 6.5, and told last week’s WinHEC developer conference: “With releases we’ll make this year - releases we’ll make with 6.5 next year, Windows Mobile 7, I think we have a pretty interesting roadmap.”

A key focus for the step upgrade is likely to be a more streamlined user interface, with handset makers like Sony Ericsson and HTC already improving on the basic Windows capabilities, and some enhancements made by ODMs and carriers are likely to be implemented in the Windows Mobile 6.5 platform. Although Microsoft can be defensive about its technologies, it has become more flexible in the mobile world, as witnessed by its initial hostility to Sony Ericsson’s unique nine-pane user interface for its Xperia X1 Windows phone, which it later reversed. Also, Windows Mobile 6.1 included the homescreen design that was originally created for the T-Mobile Shadow by HTC.

Ballmer also let slip that Microsoft might adopt an open source browser engine in future. In answer to an audience question at a Power to Developers event, he said he believed Microsoft would still need its own browser for the foreseeable future, because proprietary extensions were still necessary to broaden its functionality. But he added: “Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.”

Every time it seems that Microsoft might have abandon any hope of dominating the mobile software market, it bounces back with a new challenge to the wireless OS heavyweights, Symbian and Linux. This time, it has formed an alliance with top five handset maker and cutting edge webphone developer LG of Korea, and the pair will work closely on “converged mobile devices” from handsets to media players to netbooks, collaborating from R&D right through to sales and the creation of mobile web services.

The agreement is no more than a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at this stage, so could take two years or more to turn into products, but it points to some clear aspects of Microsoft’s strategy, even as it struggles to retain momentum for Windows Mobile and its web services offerings, at least outside its PC enterprise heartland. One, it has no intention of taking the ‘road most travelled’ and saving Windows by adopting open source. Two, it is belatedly severing the Wintel ties, which have kept it largely confined to Intel-based handsets such as the Touch range from its primary partner, HTC. Three, it accepts it is not best placed to create services and user interfaces for the converged mobile world itself, but needs more successful partners - a climbdown it also made when it allowed Sony Ericsson to design its own UI for its Windows handset, Xperia X1. Four, Windows Mobile and its associated software platforms are not going away.

On the surface, Microsoft gets the most out of this deal (though exact terms and any financial arrangements remain secret). LG is currently the most advanced of the top five in smartphone design and has huge insights into mobile web services and user experiences because of its home base in the world’s most advanced market in this respect, Korea. It has strong carrier partnerships and could drive Windows devices into CDMA, W-CDMA and even WiMAX networks, as well as via close ties with the consumer electronics channels. Microsoft, however, does bring its massive installed base - the PC side of which becomes more relevant as devices converge at the high end, forming the ‘mobile internet device’ hybrid category - and its global base of developers. And as the handset makers jostle for strategic position in pressurized markets, its steadily improving OS may prove a counterweight for Nokia rivals, to the huge influence the market leader will retain over Symbian, even as it goes into open source. Motorola has already chosen to back Android (and, secondarily, Windows) rather than Symbian, while Samsung and Sony Ericsson are taking multi-OS approaches. Yet if the companies were choosing on the basis of functionality and installed base, they would pick Symbian every time, so the desire to have greater control of their software partners, and not to let Nokia have everything its own way, are the main motivators. LG, too, may be hoping to leverage a close Microsoft alliance to ensure that there is competition in the smartphone OS sector, rather than one de facto standard under the wing of the Finnish giant.

LG Electronics’ CEO Yong Nam said, on signing the MOU with Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer: “This agreement between LG and Microsoft will create critical momentum in the industry. With this partnership, mobile computing will truly become an everyday reality, and LG and Microsoft will be at the forefront of it.”

Although 3 UK confirmed this week that it would offer Nokia’s Comes With Music unlimited downloads service, tied to its first touchscreen handset, in general the Finnish giant is having difficulties convincing its traditional cellco partners to support its range of Ovi web services, because of potential conflicts with the operators’ own brands and applications. But focusing too heavily on the dilemmas of the western European cellcos ignores a key element of Nokia’s ambitious strategy to reinvent itself as a mobile internet services giant - the focus on emerging markets. Thus the touchscreen musicphone, XpressMusic 5800 (previously codenamed Tube), and the N96 superphone, will be shipped first in emerging economies such as India, and will not reach some of Nokia’s European heartlands until after the holiday buying period. And now the world’s largest phonemaker has signed a highly significant deal with one of the most rapidly growing telcos in emerging economies, Egypt-based Orascom.

Orascom, which is expanding rapidly in its bid to create a multinational wireless super-carrier in the Middle East, Africa and Mediterranean, plans to offer Nokia’s Ovi portal and web services across its whole subscriber base. Included in the deal are Nokia Maps, Nokia N-Gage games and music applications. Orascom joins 3, Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Telenor, TIM and Vodafone in supporting Ovi - they all offer some Nokia handsets that showcase at least some Ovi services on the homescreen, although the level of commitment varies between the various partners. Vodafone, for instance, has carefully segmented its target base for music downloads, offering Nokia Musicstore on high end smartphones and its own service for the midrange - but it has stopped short of the highly integrated Comes With Music, whose unlimited offer is a major challenge to other music options. And Orange and T-Mobile have stepped back from supporting Ovi too heavily in terms of homescreen support and branding, as they try to push their own portals, though the Nokia apps are available within their stores. There is no such ambivalence from Orascom. Like other major emerging market operators that Nokia is chasing, it is under intense pressure to spend its resources on expanding its networks and gaining customers and handset partners, leaving it little time or cash to develop its own internet services and portals, especially as its brands are generally immature at this stage. Yet internet services are even more vital in these rapidly growing markets than in developed environments. While carriers need to deliver low cost tariffs and devices for low income communities, they must balance those with high value offerings and customers - and tapping into the rapidly growing middle classes in markets like India and north Africa requires not just attractive, well priced phones, but the web and media services that all consumers crave. In many cases, where there is limited wireline broadband build-out, the wireless device will be the main way for these newly affluent users to get online, creating a huge opportunity for carriers to become the primary broadband as well as mobile provider - as long as they can offer attractive, usable and well priced web and content. Such partnerships, then, are ideal to drive Nokia’s devices, with their increasingly tightly integrated applications, into new user bases which, while they may have lower average income than their western equivalents, are increasing their telecoms and internet spend at a faster rate, with most of this potentially going to a strong wireless operator and its applications partner. Orascom and its affiliates control almost 100m mobile connections worldwide, as of the second quarter of this year, mainly based on GSM/EDGE, but with rapid expansion of 3G and WiMAX too. The group has operations as far afield as Algeria, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and has expressed the intention of launching in Canada (where it is part of the Globalive group, which acquired AWS spectrum recently) and North Korea (where it acquired a 25-year license in one of the world’s last remaining untapped markets). However, the company pulled out of a partnership with Hutchison Telecom’s emerging markets group when the Hong Kong giant sold its share of its Indian joint venture to Vodafone, and Orascom is still on the look-out for a way into India. Orascom, headed by Naguib Nawiris, saw its market capitalization increase from $340m in 2003 to about $16bn in mid-2008.

Many cellcos are focusing on social networking as a likely route to win more subscribers and boost their mobile internet usage. Since the popular application is particularly suited to mobile devices, as it can be integrated with location and presence facilities, it is expected to be the biggest driver of consumer mobile web services in the coming year, after email and search. Small would-be disruptive players and established giants are all trying to get in on the act, with Telefonica and Hutchison subsidiary INQ the latest to show their hands.

A small part of the Hutchison Whampoa empire is seeking to ride the social networking wave, expanding on the model of offering simple phones focused on a key integrated application - as pioneered by 3 UK with its Skype phone (see separate item). INQ, a new subsidiary being officially launched this week, is focusing on low end handsets that come with certain key web and messaging applications pre-installed. The aim is to appeal to the rising number of people, especially in the teenage market, who want to make more use of the mobile internet, but who have limited budgets and are looking for an easy-to-use experience. Just as Hutchison’s 3 operations are looking to harness the open internet business model on their wireless networks, rather than sticking to cellco-specific services and profit streams, so INQ will do the same from the device point of view, looking to open access, low-subsidy, web-optimized phones for the mass market.

The devices will launch first via 3 UK and Australia and will integrate several services but will be particularly focused on social networking, via the Facebook offering. It will also pre-install eBay, MSN, Skype and others, with quick links from the simple home screen. The innovative user interface, driven by simplicity and multitasking rather than the highly complex designs of true smartphones, was built on the Qualcomm Brew platform, which underpins a range of web-optimized environments, most notably Alltel’s. The INQ project is another breakthrough for Brew and its user interface system, UIone, in the GSM/HSPA world - Qualcomm has been using Brew to try to expand its reach beyond its traditional CDMA market, and the software is no longer tightly tied to that network. UIone is also used by O2.

“We’ve built a multitasking environment on top of the Brew platform. Basically you just log into Facebook and the client goes out and fetches all your contacts, punches them into the phone, and asks if you’d like to integrate some or all of your contacts with the address book. It’s the same thing with Skype and MSN,” said Frank Meehan, INQ’s CEO. This offers a good halfway house between an entirely siloed Facebook device and an unfettered web experience, which can still be confusing and hard to use for many non-enthusiasts. The contact list acts as the foundation for the whole range of apps including email and messaging.

The devices also aim to support modern mobile internet models by being sufficiently low cost to need little operator subsidy. They should retail for about £100. After the UK and Australia, Meehan says about six other markets will follow by mid-2009. Although 3 operations are the most likely initial partners, INQ wants to target a wider base than its sister companies and is aiming for a US launch, though it does not expect a US carrier deal until at least the middle of next year.

Meanwhile, Telefonica is the latest tier one operator to try to seize the initiative and put itself in the center of the mobile social networking world, creating an international Facebook community in all its territories. The Spanish multinational is following a lead set by T-Mobile, which was the first major to launch an integrated dashboard covering many social networking programs, as part of its Web ‘n’ Walk offering. Telefonica is extending a deal it pioneered through its UK arm O2, allowing access to Facebook from any of its networks worldwide.

The expanded agreement calls for a phased roll-out of the new services, with the first stage O2’s operations in Ireland and Germany; Telefonica’s homeland of Spain; and some of its Latin American territories - Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. The second phase will include Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Central American countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Every participating country can include a link in the browsing menu of its handsets to Facebook’s mobile service, allowing customers to send photos and videos through integrated MMS services. Currently, more than 24m pictures are uploaded to Facebook each day and the service has 100m registered users. Telefonica has 171m mobile subscribers worldwide, a base that could create a major social networking community.

According to ABI Research, 46% of users of online social networks are accessing these from their handsets on at least some occasions. MySpace and Facebook were the destinations of choice, claiming 70% and 67% of mobile social networkers respectively; no other site reached 15% adoption. This may bode ill for companies like Nokia, which claim they can create a mobile optimized social networking experience that will outdo the big PC brands.

This year has been full of buzz around vendor software stores, such as Apple App Store and Google’s planned Android Market, which aim to promote a certain platform to users and developers. Now RIM is joining the race, with plans for a BlackBerry Application Center, but it will enter a crowded space. Some operators, like T-Mobile, are beefing up their own stores, aiming to regain the initiative by offering apps for any operating systems and devices they support. But the multiplatform store is already a well established reality, and could provide another valuable channel for developers. The interesting question is whether the likes of Apple will see them as a useful way to expand the market, or a rival to their own brands and revenue split arrangements.

RIM trades heavily on its long experience in supporting personalized apps that are tightly integrated with the handset (unfashionable in the open access era perhaps, but delivering a strong user experience, plus being highly efficient for the carrier network). Following the success of the integrated BlackBerry FaceBook app, which has been downloaded 2.5m times in the past year, RIM is taking a similar approach with fellow social networking giant MySpace, with Microsoft Live Search, ticketing service TicketMaster, and the TiVO digital video recorder system (allowing the BlackBerry to act as a remote control and for TV programming to be pushed to the user over the cellular network).

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie claimed recently that the company’s its experience with push email puts it in an ideal position to deliver more consumer-focused, web 2.0 services that rely on personalization and are driven by events or location, rather than browser-based. Talking of social networking, Balsillie said: “It is remarkable when this is in a push, connected, event-driven basis. When you change your access to information, you change your relationship to it - not incrementally but on a quantum basis. These changes are tremendously exciting.”

So it is logical that RIM’s next move would be to open a software store, and the company this week confirmed leaks that it was readying a BlackBerry Application Center to run on the Storm, with its updated operating system, BlackBerry 4.7. This will enable users to discover, browse and install third party BlackBerry apps hosted by mobile operators, serving as the primary interface between the consumer and the carrier’s directory of downloadable software. This highlights a significant difference between RIM’s approach and Apple’s - while Apple retains full control of the store, and insists on the upper hand in carrier relationships (an upper hand it will only retain if its devices keep driving ARPU and customer acquisition), RIM is pursuing its traditional path of being the carrier’s friend, optimizing its handsets and now its store to boost the cellco’s own business model. The new Application Center should make it easier for RIM users to access and download software, stimulating data usage, but this will remain entirely within the carrier’s emvironment. The Center promises one-click, browser-based installation andusers will only see applications available for their specific device model and OS version, with full descriptions and alerts when updates become available. Carriers will assume responsibility for hosting application data and sending updates to a RIM-hosted server back end - an approach also favored by Nokia, in its bid to get carriers on the side of its software and web services strategy.

The rising resentment of the controlling approach of Apple (and, operators fear, Nokia, once it gets more established in software) should boost the multiplatform download stores. One of the strongest of these, Handango, will start to offer Android apps from November. This will complement Android Market, at least in the early stages, when Google’s own store will not support paid software.

Handango believes it can attract Android developers and consumers. “We have many loyal customers that we expect will want to try the Android device but are comfortable purchasing from Handango,” said CEO Bill Stone in an interview. “What is interesting and exciting for us is that we can offer customers and developers the choice of free and paid applications at launch as well as the ability to purchase them via the web and then download to their device.”

The company’s first partner is games publisher EA Mobile, which has said it will stay away from Android Market until it can charge for software.

Within Handango, members can add Android apps directly to their developer accounts and choose to distribute them in any of three ways - give them away for free; sell for a one-time purchase fee; or set up a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription fee.

Google has given no date for including paid content in Android Market, though it has said that it would not take a revenue cut, as its main goal is to stimulate uptake of Android devices, and it wants to differentiate from Apple, which takes a 30% share of revenues generated through App Store.

Meanwhile, other third parties are trying to cash in on the vogue for device-driven applications stores. Last month, mobile content provider MobiHand announced a partnership with RIM enthusiast site CrackBerry.com to launch their own on-device storefront for the BlackBerry line. The digital retail portal enables consumers to browse and search thousands of applications optimized for their particular RIM device, and will integrate with the BlackBerry Wallet m-commerce service for purchasing.

Almost every month sees Google raising a storm of interest by investing in a new technology that could push its open mobile internet goals forward. The latest excitement surrounds a patent application for a technique that allows mobile products automatically to detect the best network in range, and area that has mainly been addressed to date by cognitive radio developments at Intel and other companies.

Carriers, even in the US, are being pushed grudgingly towards the principle of open access, as championed by the PC/internet community for years. Increasingly users will be able to attach their device to any compatible network rather than being tied to a single provider, and if their handset has multiple radios (such as Wi-Fi and 3G), they may have a choice of technologies too. The next logical step is for the device itself to decide, based on the users’ parameters, which available connection is the best (cheapest, fastest, best optimized for video, and so on).

Chip companies have been working on adaptive and cognitive radios to achieve this goal for years, and now Google - with its talent for casting the spotlight on technologies that will promote its open mobile internet goals - has fuelled the fire with its patent.

This is entitled ‘Flexible Communication Systems and Methods’, and covers a technique that Google calls Instant Bid. The coverage it has attracted is more indicative of Google’s talents for spin than any real technical breakthrough - highlighting the way the search giant has become a self-appointed bellwether for the mobile web industry, with every patent or minor investment it makes seen as a turning point for the sector. So while the concept of devices whose software gives them the ‘intelligence’ to select the best connection based on a range of criteria is hardly new - and indeed Intel showed off an Adaptive Radio back in 2004 - Google’s patent was greeted with comments like “game changer” and ” changing the telecoms world as we know it”.

While the technology could conceivably be incorporated in some future iteration of the Android platform, even Google admitted it “could turn into something, or not”. So the patent indicates Google’s willingness to pull a potentially important technology out of the shadows and the risk of obscurity, increasing its participation, expertise and influence in key areas of development like cognitive radios and their associated software platforms. This is valuable because it boosts interest and confidence in a new approach and accelerates the momentum behind it - not because Google has reinvented the wireless world.

Undoubtedly, adaptive devices will be an important element of the already ongoing trend towards open access and the breaking of the ties between operator and device. And that will change the telecoms landscape, but it won’t be any particular Google system that will tip the balance. Google has recently shown a tendency to want to get directly involved in technologies that will help achieve its goals of an true open internet model on all networks and devices, not just the PC - in turn enlarging its own revenue base dramatically. It has invested in disruptive operators, femtocells, new backhaul platforms, ’stratellites’, even built its own metro area networks. All these activities have brough profile, funds and valuable contacts to the often start-up supporters of a range of approaches, some of which may well prove important in reshaping the wireless world. Arguably Google should not go too far into technologies beyond its field of expertise - some of the missteps of early Android enhance these fears - but should content itself with lending support, not morphing into an operator or chip designer, or trying to control the whole show single-handed. A dose of megalomania aside though, Google is generally more circumspect in reality than the headlines about its activities suggest. Yes it built metro mesh networks, but the only one it really owned was in its own home city of Mountain View, and when the model proved to be flawed, it quickly retreated from commercial risk, investigated other routes to getting open wireless to the mass population (hence the investment in Clearwire and the recent involvement in low cost satellite for rural communities), and remains perfectly happy to work with the ‘bad old cellcos’ if they are prepared to push Google services.

So this new patent indicates Google’s willingness to pull a potentially important technology out of the shadows and the risk of obscurity, increasing its participation, expertise and influence in key areas of development like cognitive radios and their associated software platforms. This is valuable because it boosts interest and confidence in a new approach and accelerates the momentum behind it - not because Google has reinvented the wireless world.

Google’s real aim will be to ensure it has a pole position in the various elements of the open wireless internet jigsaw as that is assembled. So it is looking for the most likely operators that will offer a genuinely open web business model and kickstart the market - the ‘new Clearwire’ is a high hope to act as this groundbreaker in the US, and so Google has made an investment, and will ensure that it has a strong hold on all the main featuers that differentiate Clearwire and should help make it successful - open access (an all-IP initially driven by notebooks and USB); a new breed of devices featuring Android (Google and Sprint were working on apps and interfaces before Android was heard of); all this showcasing and boosting uptake of Google services, and making all-day, everyday usage of mobile web apps and data easy and cost effective.

Of course, Clearwire will still have to play to many classic operator rules. If the user really has an adaptive ‘instant bid’ device, it will only pick the Clearwire connection if this really is the cheapest/fastest/ supports the best user experience. This will mean a constant battle to match rivals on price and features, a battle that can be won or lost on a daily basis, not just when a contract ends. The open model does away with subsidies, something Sprint in particular, and cellcos in general, have been calling for, but in fact, subsidies of popular devices are the main way carriers attract users in the first place and keep them loyal. In a fully open access network, users will have to invest more upfront in owning a device capable of supporting good web services, and that will not necessarily be popular with the consumer base. In reality, the subsidies/tied network model is likely to survive, alongside growing openness, for many years to come and may have to be accommodated by Clearwire too in order to speed early adoption.

After all the hype and waiting the new Google phone, the G1 from T-Mobile has been introduced in the US, and chances are it will hit the UK by Christmas. On first sight, it is not a remarkable device as smartphones go, sharing most of its visible features with rivals like the iPhone, HTC Windows phones and many Samsung models - and falling into a lower specification category than superphones like the Nokia N96 or Samsung innov8. However, the G1 was never about feature comparisons.

Its launch gained attention not seen since the original iPhone was unveiled for three reasons - it is the first chance to see a real world handset powered by Google Android, and so has been propelled into the limelight by the massively effective Google publicity machine; it is, largely because of Google’s support, the first really serious contender as a mainstream Linux phone, and as such deserves competitive analysis in terms of US operators and the smartphone OS market as a whole, with implications for Symbian and Microsoft; and like the iPhone, it is an innovative device that gives the US, smarting from the decline of Motorola, a chance still to influence the 3G sector and beyond, even if it will do this via software this time.

The G1 may carry the weight of analysis of Android’s overall chances in the smartphone market, but it is also an important device for T-Mobile USA, which is fighting to catch up with AT&T in its 3G activities and needs stand-out handsets to support its creative mobile internet strategies, and to take on the AT&T iPhone. As such, the Google-driven hype around the G1 will do T-Mobile no harm, and the device should attract uptake as well as interest, providing a reasonable, if not remarkable, price/features combination, and the lure, for mobile web enthusiasts, of the new software platform.

The handset combines a touchscreen control similar to the iPhone’s with a full Qwerty keyboard underneath. T-Mobile will be offering the device for $179 with a two-year voice and data agreement, and will start delivering it to customers on October 22. It comes with 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, multimedia messaging and a three megapixel camera, and naturally a browser that can view full web pages and promises ‘one-click access’ to the internet. It boasts plenty of Google applications topped off with a special version of Google Maps, with its impressive ’street view’ so users can ‘walk’ along with a 3D photorealistic image of the city and street they are in. It also has access to Gmail (well any web browser would give you that), YouTube (ditto), Calendar (you’d expect it) and Google Talk instant messaging, as well as drag and drop reconfigurability.

But perhaps the biggest surprise is a bundled music player with a direct link to the Amazon MP3 store. Again, anyone with a browser could talk to the store - the idea is that a preconfigured icon takes you straight there, you buy what you want through the 3G network, and download it over Wi-Fi when next in reach of a hotspot or your home or work access point. The G1 comes with a 1Gb memory card to store music, photos and other files. This ability to purchase through the network is supposed to give the G1 an edge over Apple’s iPhone which only sideloads from iTunes.

Google also announced the release of the Android 1.0 Software Development Kit (SDK), pointing out that 1,700 applications have been written with it, and can be acquired through the Android Market, the Google equivalent of the Apple App Store.

Now they can see the G1 in the cold light of day US analysts reckon it will give the iPhone a run for its money, and outsell it in the early ramp-up. Europe and east Asia will be more unpredictable, but will also see a wider choice and more rapid roll-out of new Android-based launches from many vendors, from late in Q1 2009, once the Google team hits its stride in terms of getting new products certified for individual networks.

Meanwhile, the UK is set to be the second country to get its hands on the first Android handset, the HTC Dream, aka T-Mobile G1. The German-owned cellco said it will transport the device across the Atlantic in early November, but hitting the UK first, rather than its home territory. It sees the UK as a more advanced market for web-optimized smartphones and a strong bellwether for the rest of the region - and it will not have the same conflict of interest that its German operation will have to address, given that T-Mobile Deutschland is the partner for the iPhone.

However, T-Mobile does pledge to bring the G1 to all its European territories during the first quarter of next year, by which time there will be other Android handsets on the market, if Google and its partners can stick to their schedules for creating handsets tailored for various carrier networks round the world. China Mobile is expected to get the second Android phone, in the early part of the new year, and most likely from a local vendor.

Like the iPhone itself, the battle to win over European consumers will be tougher than in the US, where the webphone market is less developed and the new interfaces pioneered by Apple and Google stand out more distinctively in the 2G crowd. And as the iPhone’s checkered fortunes in Japan have shown, that market will be even harder to impress when the first Android device reaches operators there.

In a statement, Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of software group mobile email/middleware group Synchronica, spoke for many when he said the G1 would cause a stir among users influenced by brand and ‘the next big thing’, but would not affect smartphone fortunes significantly, at least in the short term. “There’s a common misconception that every time a major vendor jumps into the market, we will see smartphone sales surging. This does not reflect the reality. My prediction is that the Gphone will have very little impact on the mass market, which is dominated by feature phones”, he said.

RIM has held on remarkably well to its mobile email base, despite attacks from all the larger smartphone makers, but it still has to make the difficult transition to a broader business and particularly the mobile web model. Devices like the Pearl have given it some traction in the consumer market, and reduced its reliance on corporate email server deals, but now the Canadian firm is making its biggest push yet to lure new users and expand in Europe. In particular, it is seeking to apply its experience in integrated, push-based applications, gained in email, to consumer web 2.0 services, in order to provide a hub for all the consumer’s ‘four screens’. This sounds ambitious, but in his keynote address at last week’s CTIA show in California, co-CEO Jim Balsillie focused heavily on the convergence of the four screens - the home phone, cellphone, PC/internet and TV. As consumers increasingly want their activities unified at the presentation layer, RIM is looking to achieve this through new apps for its Blackberry line of devices. It claims its experience with push email puts it in an ideal position to deliver more consumer-focused, web 2.0 services that rely on personalization and are driven by events or location, rather than browser-based. Talking of social networking, Balsillie said: “It is remarkable when this is in a push, connected, event-driven basis. When you change your access to information, you change your relationship to it - not incrementally but on a quantum basis. These changes are tremendously exciting.”

As for handsets, RIM is launching a highly varied line-up this fall to support its consumer and mobile web strategies. It showed its awareness of the need to expand further outside north America by launching its high profile 3G smartphone, the Bold, in the UK - the bellwether market for western Europe - first (along with its home country of Canada and Singapore). Other European countries and the US will follow later this month. The Bold is undergoing testing at AT&T prior to its US launch, but RIM claims the indicators are good despite competition from the 3G iPhone and others, even in the 3G heartland of Europe. “The sales of the Bold in all of these other countries we’ve launched in have been good,” the company said, referring to the UK and Canada. Meanwhile, the vendor is promising its first ever flip-phone, the Pearl Flip 8220, in October. It was shown off at the CTIA show in San Francisco last week, and will ship in the US, via T-Mobile, first, with UK availability expected in late October or early November. Pricing is not available yet, but is expected to be around $200 with contract. The phone will feature a ’sure-type’ Qwerty keyboard similar to the one on the original Pearl, and a large 240 x 320 color LCD display. Initially, though, it will only support GSM/EDGE, not 3G like the Bold, RIM’s first 3G handset, but is expected to support HSDPA early next year. Balsillie told CTIA listeners that his company will be the “first to crack the code” of combining the smartphone and flip-phone (70% of US consumers prefer a flip format). Also slated for the pre-Christmas period, though possibly not until the end of November, are the RIM Thunder touchscreen handset and the Javelin, a low end model designed to push into the midrange market and possibly developing economies. And the company unveiled the first push to talk phone with Wi-Fi, for Sprint’s iDEN network. Perhaps more important than individual handset designs is RIM’s move into integrated applications. Of course it has a strong track record in this area, with its email apps, but is now trying to appeal more broadly to consumers and ride the mobile internet wave alongside Apple. So the new deals are focused on “lifestyle” rather than enterprise services, and build on last fall’s deal with Facebook - RIM says the integrated Facebook for BlackBerry application has been downloaded 2.5m times in the past year. “It’s been the fastest take-up of any application that we’ve ever had,” Balsillie said. The new customized apps include deals with Facebook competitor MySpace in the popular mobile social networking market; with Microsoft for integrated search; with TicketMaster for buying event tickets without going through the browser; and with internet radio platform Slacker to provide a music library, though this hardly matches up to iTunes or other such services for real music lovers. Interestingly, RIM has also signed up with TiVo, the popular digital video system in the US, to allow the handset to act as a remote scheduler and browser for a DVR, an agreement that could be replicated with broadcasters elsewhere, and would provide a genuine differentiator, and a logical incentive for video operators to offer RIM handsets. In the Microsoft deal, RIM has integrated the Live Search engine into the BlackBerry Browser, making this the default search engine for its devices. The mobile search platform will let BlackBerry users get contextual, location-based search results or look for nearby points of interest, such as restaurants or movie theaters, from inside BlackBerry Maps. This is despite Google’s announcement last week of Google Mobile App for BlackBerry, a free download that offers faster search and a range of Google services for RIM devices. RIM also added native support for AOL, to add to existing backing for GChat, Yahoo IM and Windows Live Messenger.