Symbian News

Android Apps Promised on Non-Android Platforms

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 07:15:00 EST

The Zürich-based Myriad Group, which is already being sued by Oracle for ceasing to pay what Myriad claims are excessive Java licensing fees, appears to be daring Oracle to find new grounds to take it to court. On Tuesday Myriad announced that it was going to try to get between Oracle and its God-given right to collect Java taxes – just like Google has with Android – and launch a thing called Alien Dalvik that will let Android apps run on non-Android platforms. It means to begin, oddly enough, with the not-very-promising MeeGo Linux operating system and show off what it’s got so far on the Nokia N900 smartphone next week in its suite at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Nokia + Microsoft + Windows Phone + Bing = Firefighting?

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:45:00 EST

"The partnership announced today provides incredible scale, vast expertise in hardware and software innovation and a proven ability to execute," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer as Nokia and Microsoft today announced plans for a broad strategic partnership to build a new global mobile ecosystem.

Cloud Expo, Inc. Announces Cloud Expo 2011 New York Venue

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:45:00 EST

Cloud Expo, Inc. announced on Thursday that Cloud Expo 2011 New York, the 8th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, will take place June 6-9, 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City. The International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the world’s leading Cloud-focused event and is held in New York, Silicon Valley, Prague, Tokyo, and Hong-Kong. Over 600 corporate sponsors and more than 65,000 industry professionals have participated in Cloud Expo since its inception, 10-folds more than all other Cloud-related events put together.

Symbian Finds New Patron, Perhaps New Purpose

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:00:00 EST

This week saw a lot of confused and confusing news about how Symbian has supposedly gotten a badly needed infusion of $31M in cash from the EU and a European R&D combine. Although Symbian still enjoys a large smartphone market share, it is dwindling fast and many of its handset OEMs are going elsewhere, like Android for the OS in their new devices. The project that is paying the money seems to point to a repurposing of the Symbian OS from smartphones to machine-to-machine (M2M) embedded applications, but you would never know it from how the Symbian Foundation is reporting it with a decidedly mobile-oriented perspective. Maybe they know the phone business is probably dead for them but they want to keep "the community" coding, or maybe they are in the dark, or in denial. It's a mystery.

Cloud Expo 2011 East To Attract 10,000 Delegates and 200 Exhibitors

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that the 8th International Cloud Expo will take place June 6-9, 2011, in New York City. The International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the world's leading Cloud-focused event and is held three times a year, in New York, Silicon Valley and in Europe. Over 600 corporate sponsors and 10,000 industry professionals have participated in Cloud Computing Expo since its inception, more than all other Cloud-related events put together.

Google To Kill Direct Google Phone Sales

Tue, 18 May 2010 21:15:00 EDT

Having alienated carriers like Sprint and Verizon by trying to sell its Android-based Nexus One phone direct to the consumer from its google.com/phone online store - Google's attempt to change the traditional cell phone sales model - it's killing the four-month-old store, describing it as merely "niche channel for early adopters," meaning its sales have been paltry. It swears it's because "many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from."

Nokia Announces First Symbian^3 Phone

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:11:55 EDT

Nokia has launched a new device, Nokia N8 powered by the Symbian^3 (S^3) platform. Symbian is a non-profit org that develops the open source mobile software platform based on Symbian OS and is actively backed by by Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsy, Samsung among others . In February, at the Mobile World Congress, Symbian announced that it was 100% open source. This will be the first phone to run on the latest version of the Symbian platform. The Nokia N8 will showcase all the advances in the S^3 platform and will also be the first smart phone to incorporate Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround sound technology that transforms the phone into an HD mobile entertainment device, which can output high definition content to HD-ready TVs, audio/video receivers (AVRs), and home theater systems via HDMI. Music store integration embedded within the radio lets users to identify a song and learn more about it. The phone comes with one-click connectivity for all internet applications including access to Nokia's Ovi Store apps . The device will feature 2D and 3D graphics architecture suitable for high performance games . The homescreen will be able to carry multiple pages of widgets . In addition, all the hand sets will come with free global Ovi Maps navigation system that can operate in 70 countries worldwide and a 12 megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash) .

What's Not Included in the iPhone 4 OS?

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:00:00 EDT

# Audio profiles: It would have been nice if the iPhone had different audio profiles for different environments that you could easily switch between. # Flash support in Safari: Yeah, this was a pie-in-the-sky wish, but we know a lot of you out there wanted it. # FM radio: Another one that was highly unlikely, but again, we know there are some who want it. # Wi-Fi syncing: We would've really liked it if we could sync or back up our information on the iPhone over Wi-Fi instead of having to plug in our USB cable. # Built-in photo editing: We know you can get third-party photo editors on the iPhone but it would be nice to have a built-in one as well.

Symbian Foundation Builds Cloud Platform on Red Hat

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:30:00 EDT

Not to mix metaphors or anything but the Symbian Foundation, which is trying to foster a new open source community around the old Nokia-proprietary mobile phone operating system, is basing the private cloud platform that hosts its developer web site developer.symbian.org on Red Hat’s Linux. Red Hat also runs most of Symbian’s servers, which have been licensed through IBM Services.

Intel & Nokia to Create a Universal Mobile OS

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:30:00 EST

Intel, the semiconductor giant, and Nokia, the mighty handset maker, have united to create a universal widget operating system good for phones, laptops, netbooks, tablets, vehicle entertainment systems, Internet-connected TVs and other still-unimagined devices out of their existing Linux platforms – an open source combination of Intel’s netbook-oriented Moblin and Nokia’s smartphone-fancying Maemo.

MeeGo Is Born as Intel and Nokia Join Forces

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:29:58 EST

Nokia and Intel will marry their Linux platforms, Maemo and Moblin, and the unified product will be called MeeGo . This joined venture is hosted by the Linux Foundation as a new open source project. The operating System will cover multiple processor architectures and a whole gamut of gadgets such as mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs, and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

Symbian Coughs up Major Platform Updates

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:32:50 EST

More details have emerged on the recently made 100% open-source Symbian^3 platform. In a blatant attempt to come up to speed with other cutting edge smartphones, it has been packed with some advanced features and functionality. New features include HDMI support, which enables users to plug their phone into a TV and watch a high-definition movie at 1080p quality without a Blu-ray player. Music store integration embedded within the radio lets users to identify a song and learn more about it. A "buy now" button, which links with the user's chosen music store, makes purchasing easy.

Symbian Goes Open Source Up Against Android

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:15:00 EST

Nokia’s Symbian operating system is now open source and free to all comers like Google’s Android OS. It’s advertised as the largest conversion of proprietary software to open source ever by the Symbian Foundation, which shepherded it out. Code for some features lags the release, which is four months ahead of its June deadline but two years after Android came out.

Symbian Completes Biggest Open Source Migration Project Ever

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:00:00 EST

The Symbian Foundation on Thursday completed the open source release of the source code for the world’s most widely-used smartphone platform. The Symbian platform, which has been developed over more than 10 years and has shipped in more than 330 million devices around the world, is now completely open and the source code is available for free. The transition of this market-leading platform from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history. The move has been completed four months ahead of schedule and provides the basis for unlimited mobile development based on innovation and openness.

Symbian Seeks to Innovate by Opening Up Completely

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST

In the face of stiff competition from the freely available and wildly popular Android software, the Symbian Foundation has had no choice but to follow Google's example. It has announced that its open source migration project is now complete and that the Symbian platform called Symbian 3 is 100% open. Symbian software is currently used in more than 330 million phones around the world.

Hotel Bookings via Mobile Phone

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:50:00 EST

hotel.info’s motto “Check & Book” now also applies when using your mobile. Netbiscuits, the leading software platform for the development and operation of mobile websites, has implemented a mobile portal for hotel.info, one of the leading worldwide online hotel reservation services. Users can now book a hotel in the desired location with their mobile phones via m.hotel.info. Furthermore, hotel.info’s best price option means the cheapest offer can be determined with a single click.

Wilson Kerr Launches "Location Based Services" Topic on Ulitzer

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:30:00 EST

The power of Location allows information (including advertising) to be delivered to consumers most-able to act upon this information, based on their real-time proximity to the physical locations where transactions occur. Location is changing the very nature of advertising and mobile Location Based Services (LBS) are expected to see a 45% increase in revenue generated in 2010. In the next 5 years, more people will gain access to the web on their phones than on PCs. Since consumers carry their phones with them, this is a game-changer for performance-based advertising. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Nokia, Apple, Amazon, Dell, Garmin, etc are all in the mix here and there is a lot at stake.

Is a Smartphone a Digital Signage Player Too?

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:45:00 EST

Like many people in the industry I have been watching the evolution of these phones and thinking they will pretty quickly get to the point that they could be fully realized digital signage playback devices. This one is capable of playing out 720P HD, the report says. However, the question was always whether that made any sense if small form factor PCs were available for $300-$400 and these handsets were $600. Presumably, the cost breakdown here is for very high volumes and does not include assembly. So baking all that in, these are units that would still probably be more than a very capable small-form factor PC. But if the right deal could be worked with a carrier, and therefore the subsidized handset costs kicked in, these things are now at a point where testing one would not be the goofiest thing ever tried. The open question, probably among many, is whether a smartphone designed to play videos and Flash 10 now and then would behave nicely if it was asked to do that over and over and over, 20 hours or more each day.

Berkery Noyes Releases 2009 Online & Wireless M&A Trends

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:30:00 EST

This increase in value is due in large part to a significant increase in the aggregate value of deals done in the E-Marketing & Search segment. The aggregate value of deals done in this segment was $3.21 billion in 2008 and $5.98 billion in 2009, an increase of 86%. Several large deals in this segment contributed to the increase in aggregate value, including Adobe's acquisition of Omniture for $1.6 billion; Google's acquisition of Admob for $750 million; and VivaKi's acquisition of Razorfish for $530 million. All three of the aforementioned deals exceeded 2008's largest transaction in the E-marketing & Search segment, which was Microsoft's acquisition of Greenfield Online for $460 million.

View Cloud Power Panel on SYS-CON.TV Live From Times Square

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

View the live panel discussion taped on December 8, 2009 at SYS-CON.TV's 4th-floor studio overlooking Times Square in New York City a very special "Power Panel" in which Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan and three top industry guests from EMC, Intel and Unisys will be looking “under the hood” of the fastest-growing new trend in all of Enterprise IT – Cloud Computing.

SK Telecom Builds Cloud Computing Platform with IBM

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST

IBM announced that it has successfully built Korea's first cloud computing environment for a private sector company, SK Telecom, the largest telecommunications company in Korea with over 24 million customers. The cloud environment provides developers with the necessary software and hardware to develop applications that will allow SK Telecom to offer up to 20 new services to their customers by the end of 2009, such as sports news feeds and a photo service. The IBM-built cloud environment will allow SK Telecom and its business partners to more quickly develop, test and publish new end-user services.

Introducing Cisco’s Mobile Internet Technology Group

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:45:00 EST

The holiday season is always a time of excitement, anticipation, and good will. Clearly, mobile is at the heart of all three! I just spent $300 on new smartphones for my family and upgraded our plans to 1200+ minutes, 500+ text messages, and tens of mega bytes per month. That does not even include everything I do with my business phone! If this is any indication, the mobile data traffic will far exceed the projections from the Cisco Visual Networking Index in many markets!

AdMob Announces New Open Source SDK for Palm

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:15:00 EST

Mobile advertising network, AdMob has always been quick to seize happening platforms like iPhone and Android to serve up their ads. Now that Palm has announced that their smartphone sales rose 134% to 823,000 units during the latest quarter, AdMob was quick to catch on and has announced support for Palm ‘s webOS as well.

Share Advertising Revenue With Your Mobile Phone

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

MoadCast brings the consumer and the advertiser closer together in a more meaningful, cost-effective and targeted manner with a revolutionary permission based mobile phone community. MoadCast offers its members a guaranteed revenue share of the advertising revenue generated through MoadCast's mobile phone advertising platform. Members join for free and have the ability to earn up to GBP45 per month.

Regarding Google’s $750 Million Acquisition of AdMob

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST

“The news that Google acquired mobile advertising player AdMob for $750 million confirms the legitimacy of the mobile advertising industry, and overcomes any skepticism of whether small screens can offer big opportunities to reach mobile consumers,” says Dave Gwozdz, CEO of Mojiva Inc., which operates a mobile ad serving platform and mobile ad network. “The fact that Google has placed a premium on owning a mobile ad network is very notable. The market has definitely matured to the point where it makes sense for online behemoths to try to combine networks, analytics and delivery technologies in the hopes of capturing a share of this growing market.”

Our Social Network Just Got Bigger

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:15:00 EST

LG Electronics Canada and Rogers Wireless today announced a world first: the LG Eve, a new Android OS-based smartphone designed specifically for social networking, is now available exclusively at Rogers. The LG Eve provides customers with the freedom of mobile social networking, making it easier to stay connected anytime, anywhere.

LTE - The Rise of the Mobile Prosumer

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:00:00 EST

Such consumer & technology transformation has distorted the way 'Prosumer' consume their products & services, and interact with their mobile devices. The industry awaits to see if Asia’s Top Telecom guns can decide on a unified approach to map revenue streams back to the operators. The average handset has evolved from the humble voice-box, to the total media centre. As a result thousands of start-up companies are profiting out of the Telecom sector's advances, supplying the various add-ons which inevitably accompany any new wave of technology.

Vodafone 360 Samsung M1 Expands Market Reach of LiMo Handset Portfolio

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

LiMo Foundation, a global consortium of mobile industry leaders today announced the Vodafone 360 Samsung M1, the second LiMo compliant device built upon LiMo Platform Release 2 (R2). This latest handset developed by Samsung offers mobile consumers a unique mobile experience presented through Vodafone’s stunning feature-rich, highly customizable Vodafone 360 user interface (UI) – providing a new set of Internet services for the mobile and PC that gathers all of a customer’s friends, communities, entertainment and personal favorites in one place. Following in the footsteps of the Vodafone 360 Samsung H1, the Vodafone 360 Samsung M1 is designed in price and function for a larger segment of mobile consumers.

Push It Up! Implementing Apple's Push Notifications for Fun and Profit

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Ever looked into Apple’s Push Notification? If you thought it was as a simple as flicking a switch, think again! Enabling Push in your app is just the start and Joe Pezzillo, Co-Founder of Push IO LLC and the founder of Metafy LLC, will show you how to get your application up and running with Push Notifications in no time.

Qualcomm Innovation Center Joins the Symbian Foundation

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:00:00 EDT

Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. (QuIC) and the Symbian Foundation today announced that QuIC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, has joined the Symbian Foundation and has been appointed to the Symbian Foundation board of directors. QuIC will support the Symbian Foundation with active participation on the board of directors and each of the four councils that govern the development of the Symbian platform.

Rapid Application Delivery - Going Hybrid

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EDT

According to Lee Barney, “You will learn how and why to use the standard UIWebView in your applications in any way from a simple display of easily formatted text.” Barney will be presenting a 45-minute breakout session at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West, being held November 3rd, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in conjunction with SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo (November 2-4, 2009).

Key Steps to Developing VoIP-enabled Apps for the iPhone

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:30:00 EDT

According to Jan Skoglund, “Trying to cobble a VoIP solution is likely to cause developers severe headaches, time delays and frustration.” Skoglund will be presenting a 45-minute breakout session at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West, being held November 3rd, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in conjunction with SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo (November 2-4, 2009).

Selling Products with StoreKit

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:30:00 EDT

According to Ernest Svehla, “Iwill include a quick review of key components then present best practices for organizing your products, selecting a selling model, and implementing your approach.” Svehla will be presenting a 45-minute breakout session at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West, being held November 3rd, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in conjunction with SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo (November 2-4, 2009).

Design Patterns for Distributed Mobile Applications

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:45:00 EDT

According to Jason Christensen, “Patterns are important for consuming ReST based web-services, TCP stream based services, and Push notifications from the iPhone.” Christensen will be presenting a 45-minute breakout session at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West, being held November 3rd, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in conjunction with SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo (November 2-4, 2009).

Enabling Enterprise Mobility on the iPhone

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:45:00 EDT

According to Senthil Krishnapillai, “As pressures mount on IT departments to allow devices access to complex types of corporate data, iPhone business use must go beyond secure email access.” Krishnapillai will be presenting a 45-minute breakout session at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West, being held November 3rd, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in conjunction with SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo (November 2-4, 2009).

Rhomobile CEO to Speak at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EDT

With the iPhone more than earning its place in the consumer market, it is now being adopted by enterprises. But just how easy it is to create robust enterprise applications for the iPhone, as well as all the other major mobile platforms? With Ruby and HTML in the cloud, according to Rhombobile CEO Adam Blum, the answer is "Very easy." Blum will be presenting a 45-minute breakout session at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West, being held November 3rd, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in conjunction with SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo (November 2-4, 2009).

Rhomobile to Announce Production Release of RhoHub at 4th Cloud Expo

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that Rhomobile, Inc., the makers of the Rhodes smartphone development framework, will be Exhibiting at the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, taking place November 2-4, 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA. At the event, Rhomobile will be announcing the Production Release of RhoHub, the world’s first development-as-a-service offering for the mobile industry. RhoHub provides a web-based service for both smartphone app development and hosting of mobile applications, making native mobile applications easier to build, deploy and run on all smartphones including BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian and iPhone. RhoHub allows developers to generate, compile and run smartphone applications through the web giving them flexibility in their build environment. No SDK (Software Developer Kit) is required, making the build process faster and more affordable. Developers can write code online from the RhoHub website anywhere.

MapKit Best Practices

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:45:00 EDT

According to Ernest Svehla, “I will include a quick review of key components then present best practices for displaying map customizations and annotations specific to your application needs.” Svehla will be presenting a 45-minute breakout session at iPhone Developer Summit 2009 West, being held November 3rd, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in conjunction with SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo (November 2-4, 2009).

Risks and Enterprise Mobility?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EDT

This is the fourth in a series of five initial articles, in which I'm going to put my thoughts and findings on the subject of Enteprise Mobility. For this penultimate article I've decided to raise the Risks to be aware of before and during implementation of an Enterprise Mobility Strategy.

Bluetooth SIG Opens Nominations for Best of CES Awards

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:00:00 EDT

The SIG’s Best of CES Awards is a revamped version of the organization’s annual Best of CES contest. The new awards program was designed to create a simple and flexible nomination process to better shine a spotlight on the year’s most exciting Bluetooth devices. Submissions must no longer fall into a product category and can be entered when nominated by a member company or the SIG itself.