Sprint (NYSE: S) is unveiling a new plan to upgrade its national wireless network today, and Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire is not part of the picture. That’s sent shares of Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) into a nosedive, losing a third of their value in afternoon trading.

It had previously seemed that Sprint, as the majority shareholder, might have to play a key role in helping Clearwire remake its own network. Clearwire is a wholesale provider, but its early fourth-generation (or 4G) network is based on a kind of wireless technology called WiMax—and WiMax is quickly being displaced as long-term evolution, or LTE, becomes the industry standard.

Clearwire has said it needs close to $1 billion for its network upgrade—some $600 million to add LTE, with another $300 million or so to finish work on its existing WiMax infrastructure. But today, Sprint announced a $5 billion plan to upgrade its own network. And an investment in boosting Clearwire wasn’t part of the plan.

Even before today, Sprint had been sending increasing public signals that Clearwire is basically on its own. And the company hammered home the point even further today: As the Puget Sound Business Journal reports, Sprint said it wouldn’t offer Clearwire-compatible phones after next year, and CEO Dan Hesse said Sprint had “nothing beyond 2012 to announce” about network arrangements with Clearwire.

There’s also this Associated Press report on the analyst and investor meeting, which includes this key scene of Hesse basically pooh-poohing Clearwire’s situation:

“In a testy exchange with Sprint executives, a member of the audience at the investor meeting questioned why Sprint would risk forcing Clearwire to seek bankruptcy protection when it owns 54 percent of the company, and could lose its share of Clearwire’s spectrum in a bankruptcy case.

Sprint executives didn’t directly address that possibility, but Hesse noted that no bankruptcy case involving a wireless company has resulted in a disruption of service.”

Clearwire’s response was similar to the notes it’s sounded recently: Despite all the turmoil, it has lots of spectrum, and “Sprint remains dependent on Clearwire for 4G” today.

“As demand for mobile data increases, Clearwire remains the only viable 4G wholesaler with an operating 4G network, substantial spectrum resources, and a global technology road map to serve this growing market,” the company said in a statement.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

What do the top executives at Qualcomm view as the key developments as mobile communications accelerate with the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and other wireless devices?

At a town hall forum last night at the wireless giant’s San Diego headquarters, Qualcomm chairman and CEO Paul Jacobs said the mobile experience has gone through a critical change in the transition to 3G. It used to be just about voice communications. Now it is all about data. And going forward, Jacobs said, it’s going to be much more about enabling other technologies.

“Now what we see are the chips in phones are going into all these other mobile devices, where all things are connected.” In the world Jacobs describes, each of us would move through a world of wireless devices and networks. There could be some places where you could be surrounded by thousands of radios, and your mobile phone “will sense that and allow you to interact.”

This means the wireless environment is headed for even greater complexity. Jacobs says the smartphone you carry around is just going to have to deal with a lot more devices that use different technology platforms, different operating systems, different software, and different radios—including cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, near field communication, and satellite-based systems. Qualcomm has even been developing technology that will enable users to move between Western GPS technology and Russia’s expanding Glonass system.

In anticipation of this new wireless ecosystem, Qualcomm demonstrated a new proximity-based, peer-to-peer networking technology called FlashLinq several months ago during the wireless industry’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. FlashLinq is designed to automatically and continuously enable mobile devices to “sense” each other and relay relevant information, based on a user’s individual preferences.

“The key is really going to be making all these things simple [for the user],” Jacobs said. Power consumption also is important, so the system is designed to exchange data with other devices instead of sending it back through the network. “You want to be able to discover what’s around you without burning up your battery, so peer-to-peer is more efficient,” Jacobs said.

Qualcomm also unveiled AllJoyn, an open source software technology for enabling developers to create new mobile apps that allow peer-to-peer groups to form to play a multi-player game or to share information at a conference, and then go their separate ways.

After covering all this in a short overview of the company’s technology initiatives, Qualcomm’s chairman and CEO was joined on … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

It’s no secret that some big West Coast players have shown interest in Boston’s homegrown mobile technology lately. In the past few weeks, San Jose, CA-based eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) has bought Where, a location-based mobile advertising and recommendations provider, and mobile payments startup Fig Card, to roll into its PayPal division.

But Boston-based Skyhook Wireless has a slightly different relationship with a Bay Area Internet giant. It’s been wrestling in court with Mountain View, CA-based search engine giant Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), around its location-finding technology for mobile phones. Skyhook has sued Google for alleged patent infringement, as well as alleged interference by Google with deals Skyhook had inked with Motorola and Samsung for devices running on Google’s Android smartphone platform. (You can read more about the lawsuits here and here.)

It looks like there’s still a long way to go for that case to be resolved—last week lawyers from both sides met before a Suffolk County Superior Court. Google’s lawyers asked for the judge to throw out the case, on the basis that Google had pre-existing agreements with device makers, in which some of its standard apps automatically collected location data. Meanwhile, Skyhook’s lawyers re-emphasized their claim that Google road-blocked Motorola and Samsung from following through on agreements to ship smartphones with Skyhook’s XPS software, which determines a user’s location using WiFi, cellular, and GPS access points.

Yesterday, the judge denied both Google’s motion to dismiss the case and for a summary judgment, court documents show. The case will now to go into full discovery to gather the necessary documents and depositions, a period that could take six months—a timetable suggested by Google lawyers last week.

So it’s a small victory for Skyhook, but its legal work is just beginning. “Their goal is to try and bleed us out and our goal is to try and make sure we get the facts brought to light,” Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan told me this week.

Meanwhile, Skyhook has been nabbing some bigger victories out of the courtroom. This week it announced that MapQuest, the San Francisco-based mapping division of AOL, will use Skyhook’s technology in an upcoming turn-by-turn navigation app for Android phones. Skyhook has inked similar deals with UberMedia, Citysearch, and Priceline over the past few months.

“In the meantime what we’re doing is going after all the top Android apps that offer location,” Morgan says. “That way we’ll get on every Android device, but it will be through the apps instead of device makers.”

Google’s and Apple’s impending appearances before a U.S. Senate committee also shed some positive light onto Skyhook’s technology, he says. Lawmakers have expressed concern over reports that Apple logs user location data on mobile devices. Google, which has claimed that … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Troubled 4G wireless network operator Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) had some positive news today, reporting that it and majority shareholder Sprint had resolved a dispute over wholesale pricing. Sprint (NYSE: S) will pay at least $1 billion over the next two years for use of Clearwire’s service, the companies said in a joint statement.

Interim Chief Executive John Stanton told the Wall Street Journal that the cash allows Clearwire to “operate efficiently over the next couple of years” and plan for expansion. Stanton took over the CEO’s job last month, after Bill Morrow and two other top officers left the Kirkland, WA-based company. Clearwire said at that time that it believed an agreement with Sprint was imminent. Clearwire founder and longtime wireless leader Craig McCaw resigned as chairman a few months back, and late last year Clearwire reported that it was cutting 15 percent of its workforce.

The deal announced today gives Clearwire $300 million this year, $550 million next year, and a $175 million prepayment to allow Sprint continued access to Clearwire’s 4G services. The two companies also said they have an agreement for Sprint phones that operate both on Sprint’s 3G network and Clearwire’s 4G system.

Stanton also declined to comment when asked by the WSJ whether Clearwire was discussing a possible takeover by Sprint, and said Clearwire would need more money if it decides to expand its 4G network to include a second type of technology, known as Long-Term Evololution or LTE. He did say Clearwire’s current investors, which also include Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Intel, may be interested in helping.

Clearwire’s current network is based on a technology called WiMax, but the company has tested LTE systems, and said it is “technology agnostic.” LTE is more widely used by other wireless companies.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

The Seattle area’s longstanding prominence in the wireless carrier sector was thrown into question this weekend with AT&T’s announcement that it was purchasing Bellevue, WA-based T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. It will take months to see how the feds handle this proposed acquisition.

But at least in the meantime, AT&T is saying all the right things: The combination will drive better broadband coverage, competition won’t be diminished, and of great interest locally, that it will maintain a significant presence in the Puget Sound region. It’s worth revisiting a great interview that Xconomy’s Greg Huang did with Tom Huseby for some of the history behind this big news.

—Another of this region’s tech heavyweights, Amazon.com, continues to make news for reasons it surely doesn’t like: The ongoing drive by state officials to make hay with the public by targeting Amazon’s reluctance to become a sales-tax collector. But a bit of news from Olympia points out that bringing Amazon to heel isn’t the salve politicians may be looking for. As illustrated by the state’s chief economist, even though Amazon collects sales taxes here in Washington, the state Revenue Department is still missing out on probably half the sales tax revenue it should be getting from Internet retail. Think about that: Even with the behemoth of online retail doing its bit, Washington state’s strapped budget is still not able to collect some $370 million each year—a figure that looks to continue growing at a steep pace.

—I had a chance to interview business consultant, author, and venture capitalist Geoffrey Moore (of the book “Crossing the Chasm”) ahead of his speech to the Technology Alliance’s Washington Innovation Summit, and he stirred up all sorts of interesting ideas. Check out the whole thing for Moore’s take on why middle managers are key in a flattened-out … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

The sale of Bellevue, WA-based T-Mobile USA to AT&T for $39 billion shook up the mobile world this weekend, both nationally and in the Seattle area. It’s unclear what the practical effects will be for T-Mobile employees in the Puget Sound region, and we might not know for some time: The companies say the acquisition process could take about a year.

T-Mobile’s sale does, however, clearly mark the end of another major era in the region’s longstanding leadership in the wireless field. Check out this really interesting interview that Xconomy’s Greg Huang did with venture capitalist Tom Huseby in 2008 for a sense of the history at play. Basically: AT&T’s wireless business came of age with the 1994 acquisition of Seattle’s pioneering McCaw Cellular. And McCaw veteran John Stanton started VoiceStream, which was purchased by T-Mobile in 2001.

As Huseby noted in that Xconomy interview, “Every time someone was bought, they actually didn’t move people out of Seattle. People would move here, and it just kept growing … We have more concentration of carrier presence here than anywhere else in the country. It’s unbelievable.”

That’s not the situation today. AT&T’s headquarters are in Dallas and will undoubtedly stay there. In Sunday’s press release, AT&T did say that “the combined company will continue to have a strong employee and operations base in the Seattle area.” An AT&T spokesman told The Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley that “any reduction we anticipate will come through natural attrition.” GeekWire also got ahold of the memo sent to T-Mobile employees, in which CEO and President Philipp Humm said that “AT&T’s leadership has said keeping [T-Mobile's] talented people through this transition is one of their top priorities.”

Meanwhile, AT&T President Ralph De La Vega tells Mobilized that the tie-up will improve the network, won’t be a distraction for customers, and should have a good chance at getting federal approval. Washington, D.C.’s The Hill interviewed AT&T policy executive Jim Cicconi, who indicated that one element of the regulatory case will be that consolidation in mobile was inevitable.

And finally, The Seattle Times’ Jon Talton saw no positives for the Seattle area in the T-Mobile news. I found particularly compelling Talton’s emphasis on the effect that losing a major standalone tech company will have on the entrepreneurship landscape in the region. Therefore, his take gets the last word:

“I believe there’s nothing like a major headquarters for well-paying jobs, civic stewardship, attracting talent and capital, and fostering executive talent that leaves the mother ship to start new enterprises. Back-office towns always languish.”

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share:          

Competition in the crowded daily-deals market got a little more pugnacious recently with an acquisition by group discount site BuyWithMe. The Boston- and New York-based company purchased LocalTwist, boosting BuyWithMe in San Diego and putting the company in a new market—Seattle.

The latter city, of course, is the home base of competitor Tippr, the Martin Tobias-led company that is currently suing BuyWithMe in federal and state court over two different issues. As my colleague Greg Huang notes, it’s all part of the “life-and-death struggle for third place” in daily deals.

Other stories that made the rounds at Xconomy in the past week or so:

—Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) had another confrontation with state government over the company’s extreme aversion to being deputized as a sales-tax collector. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law that state’s version of an “Amazon law,” trying to make the sales in Illinois subject to sales tax by targeting Amazon’s marketing tie-ins with affiliate websites.

With a steady drumbeat of regulation attempts happening in the states, I took a look at why these efforts are really a side issue in making a big national policy change. Long story short: More aggressive state regulations aren’t likely to make Amazon heel, but they could serve as another prod for Congress to finally act on a broader solution.

—Kirkland, WA-based wireless provider Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) saw more top names hit the bricks, just a few months after founder and local wireless legend Craig McCaw left his post as chairman of the board. Chief Executive Bill Morrow, Chief Information Officer Kevin Hart, and Chief Commercial Officer Mike Sievert are out in the latest shake-up. As The Wall Street Journal’s Russell Garland noted, Sievert’s last public words on Clearwire’s behalf were very likely at our big Mobile Madness event, where he sounded optimistic: “We lack for nothing except cash.”

New board Chairman John Stanton, another titan of the Seattle-area wireless landscape, was immediately tapped as interim CEO while the board searches for a long-term replacement. Asked whether he’d take over as CEO permanently, Stanton gave The Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley an unequivocal no. Clearwire also said that it believes a resolution is near in a dispute over wholesale pricing with majority owner Sprint (NYSE: S).

—The center of gravity in the tech world shifted temporarily to some college town in Texas for the interactive portion of South by Southwest. Plenty of well-known names from the Seattle tech scene were … Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

In a detailed teardown of the new Verizon version of Apple’s iPhone 4, home repair website iFixit revealed yesterday that the device contains CDMA chips manufactured by San Diego-based Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM). The device includes both a Qualcomm MDM6600—a “world mode” baseband chip that can support both CDMA and GSM cellular frequencies—and a Qualcomm PM8028 power management chip. Though not unexpected, given Qualcomm’s position as the leading manufacturer of CDMA-capable communications chips, the news suggests that Qualcomm could have an important new customer in Apple, especially if large numbers of AT&T subscribers switch to Verizon in search of better network coverage.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Last week’s Consumer Electronics Show dominated San Diego’s tech news last week. We have the highlights from the two dozen San Diego tech companies that attended the annual conference, along with the rest of the local biztech news.

—In one more sign that Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly important to the future of wireless network infrastructure, San Diego’s Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) said it’s buying San Jose-based chipmaker Atheros Communications (NASDAQ: ATHR) for roughly $3.1 billion. The acquisition, if finalized, is Qualcomm’s biggest ever—and expands the wireless giant’s reach into products that span cellular, home, smart grid, and sensor networks.

—Motorola split into two new companies—Motorola Solutions, which will remain in Motorola’s headquarters in Schaumburg, IL, and Motorola Mobility, which is moving, for now, to nearby Libertyville, IL. There’s no word yet on whether Motorola Mobility, now headed by former Qualcomm COO Sanjay Jha, will move its HQ to San Diego, the Bay Area, or Austin, TX, the three cities Jha said the company was considering late last year.

—The annual Consumer Electronics Show regained its appeal as more than 140,000 attendees flooded the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center last week. The hottest electronics categories this year included smart phones, tablets, and TVs, and we saw the world of software apps moving from complex suites such as Microsoft Office to simpler “best of breed” apps available online at places like the Apple App Store.

—Sony Electronics, whose North American headquarters is in San Diego, led the charge in Web-enabled television with its lineup of sets powered … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

As the news cycle slows down with the approach of the holidays, I’ve had a bit of time to attend to my towering backlog of unpublished interviews, including the one below, from a visit to Boston-based uLocate. CEO Walt Doyle and vice president of marketing Dan Gilmartin had me over on November 9 for the company’s weekly pizza lunch, and we talked about the latest developments with the company’s “Where” platform—a collection of location-aware widgets for your smartphone that can do things like find you the best local prices on gasoline, direct you to the nearest Starbucks, show you a live map of local traffic, grab movie reviews for the flicks playing locally, and so forth.

These days, of course, there are of plenty of apps for the iPhone and other smartphone platforms that do each of those things separately. But uLocate has been working in the world of location-based services for a long time—six years, with a total company relaunch in 2007 funded by Venrock, Grandbanks Capital, and Kodiak Venture Partners. And in that time, they’ve figured out not only how to combine all of the location-related information a mobile user might need into one convenient package, but how to bundle up that package and distribute it across six different mobile platforms on seven carriers.

Yes, I said six platforms (iPhone, Android, Palm, Blackberry, the Web, and SMS) on seven carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and MetroPCS). That’s a feat of remarkable engineering and sales prowess in the maddeningly fragmented world of mobile communications.

Perhaps even more remarkably, Gilmartin says uLocate is now turning a profit, having hit on a combination of revenue sources that are likely the envy of many a competing mobile-app company. Those include subscriptions (most Where users, with the exception of iPhone owners, pay a $3 monthly fee for access to the Where widgets), search-based advertising, banner advertising, and commissions on e-commerce transactions such as movie ticket purchases and restaurant reservations.

“A lot of people are trying to figure out how to make money on mobile,” says Doyle. “The one that we’re after is around capitalizing on the personalization—-leveraging our access to network-based location information to present location-specific opportunities to users.”

Still, uLocate faces an uphill battle promoting Where, given the sheer number of competing location-aware applications exploding onto the scene through Apple’s iTunes App Store, the Android Marketplace, Palm’s App Catalog, and other mobile app stores. In our interview, I pressed Doyle and Gilmartin to explain what sets uLocate’s platform apart from other apps, and to talk about the areas where the company wants to keep innovating.

Xconomy: What’s the big idea at uLocate — the distinct, unifying vision?

Walt Doyle: The vision is pretty simple. I was the general manager at Mapquest; I’m a media guy by background, with some experience in VoIP, Gamespot, Dow Jones. At Mapquest we had begun to see location capabilities arriving on mobile handsets. Dan, who was at Sprint Nextel running location-based services, and I had the opportunity to meet. We said, it’s dead-dumb simple: you’ve got emerging devices with location capability that are portable and that are going to create an opportunity for exciting future services that are always-on and always with you, and the monetization capabilities will keep up and will be even more powerful as you gain the context of location. That was the vision. What none of us ever anticipated was how fragmented the marketplace is, from both an operating-system perspective and a distribution perspective.

X: But wasn’t that fragmentation obvious even back then?

Dan Gilmartin: The fragmentation developed over time. If you think back to 2000, everyone was walking around with a StarTac, and Motorola was the number one player. The fragmentation was there, but it wasn’t as large because you didn’t have so many pressures from people saying “Hey, I want GPS, I want Java.”

WD: In the end I think the fragmentation, both at the OS and the distribution level, has been our friend [because it keeps out major competitors]. What it translates to is that … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

One of the recurring themes during the international wireless industry’s conference in San Diego last month was the phenomenal surge in mobile data traffic, and how it is leading to constraints and bottlenecks in existing network infrastructure.

As engineers approach the limit in terms of wringing any more efficiencies out of existing radio bands, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs and other experts are talking about the need to increase network “density” by mixing ever-smaller microcells, picocells, and femotcells in closer proximity with standard macrocell towers. Such changes represent a dramatic change in network design, and would have to be part of the industry’s broader move to 4G wireless technologies. But the advent of more dense networks with overlapping cellular configurations also means increased inter-cellular radio interference among the smaller and more powerful cells that would operate closer together—with some operating entirely within the footprint of larger base stations.

It is a problem, though, that Yan Hui saw coming in late 2007 when he left a San Diego-based research & development group operated by Texas Instruments to found AirHop Communications. The San Diego software developer specializes in SON, or self-organizing networking technology, that is intended to simplify and coordinate the operation of 4G wireless networks while minimizing radio interference and maximizing mobile data rates.

“With 4G networks, we know the structure is going to be totally different,” Hui tells me. Where the high end of data rates in existing 3G wireless networks range from 3 megabits per second to 7.2 megabits a second, Hui says 4G technology is promising 100 megabits per second. Hui says, “The industry recognizes that the only way to get to high data rates is with smaller, dense cells” that will require re-using frequencies and managing the inter-cellular interference.

AirHop CEO Yan Hui

Hui says the software that AirHop is developing is intended for use in 4G wireless base station hardware, and that the company’s software engineers have been working closely with Texas Instruments and at least three other wireless chipmakers. He describes AirHop’s customers as the component and system venders that make base station equipment for wireless network operators. The company is self-funded, and raised about $1 million in September from individual investors to expand its marketing and business development efforts.

The company, which has 10 employees, estimates its software will reach the market in 2011, although some 4G networks could be deployed earlier. Among AirHop’s selling points is that the multi-tier design of 4G networks will be too complex for conventional installation and set up, so AirHop-equipped cellular hardware will be self-configuring. “It’s called plug and play,” Hui explains. “You turn it on for two hours [while it determines its network requirements] and then it starts working.”

Hui explains that AirHop’s technology also must be capable of … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

It was a fairly busy week for deals heading into the Thanksgiving holiday. The Northwest saw some action across aviation, alternative fuels, wireless, software, and biotech.

—Kent, WA-based Naverus was acquired by GE Aviation, an operating unit of General Electric (NYSE: GE). Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Naverus, founded in 2003, makes aviation navigation technologies that help make airline flight paths faster, safer, and more fuel-efficient.

—Seattle-based Bio Architecture Lab, a startup using synthetic biology to make alternative fuels and chemicals, has raised $8 million in its first round of venture financing, as Luke reported. The investors include Energy Capital Management, the venture arm of Norway-based Statoil; Chile-based Austral Capital; and X/Seed Capital of Menlo Park, CA. Bio Architecture Lab has also scored a partnership with DuPont to make biofuels from ocean seaweed.

—Bellevue, WA-based Root Wireless closed a $3.25 million Series B funding round, co-led by investors Fred Warren and Oliver Grace, Jr. Existing investors in the company include Scott Anderson, Jack Roberts, and John Stanton, all of whom participated in the latest round. Root Wireless makes technologies that analyze and map the performance of cellular networks and devices in eight metro areas around the country, with 12 more in the works.

—Infinia, the Kennewick, WA-based developer of solar power technology, raised $2.6 million in new financing from equity and options, as Luke reported. This means Infinia has raised about $13 million this month in debt and equity (including $10 million in short term debt), largely from existing investors, according to CEO J.D. Sitton. Infinia is generating electricity by collecting and focusing heat from sunlight and using it to drive a Stirling engine.

—Seattle Genetics, the Bothell, WA-based cancer drug developer, will receive a $12 million upfront payment from Agensys, an affiliate of Japan-based Astellas Pharma, under a renegotiated partnership to make targeted and more potent antibody treatments, as Luke reported. Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN) formed its first partnership with Agensys in January 2007. The new deal allows the companies to collaborate on new targets of cancer drugs.

—In our second monthly installment of “under the radar” deals, I detailed 12 Northwest company financings under $1 million from October. The data comes from ChubbyBrain, a New York-based company building data-driven tools for investors and entrepreneurs. Some of the companies highlighted were Portland, OR-based Zapproved, and Bellevue, WA-based Intellisist and 1000Museums.

—Seattle software company Cozi has formed a strategic partnership with MeadWestvaco (NYSE: MWV), a Sidney, NY-based maker of school and office supplies and planning tools. Financial details weren’t given, but the deal gives MWV consumers access to Cozi’s Web-based tools for helping families manage their schedules. The tools include a family calendar, customized to-do lists, and messaging systems.

—Voyager Capital, the Seattle-based venture firm, participated in a $5 million investment in 1020, the San Francisco developer of Placecast, a location-based advertising and marketing platform. Quatrex Capital and Onset Ventures also joined the Series B round. Voyager is a returning investor in the company.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Last time I checked, there were 85,000 iPhone applications in Apple’s iTunes App Store, a number that seems to grow by thousands every week. But most of those apps were dreamed up by developers, not by average users. Now there’s a way for anyone with a bright idea for an iPhone app to submit it—and, if other people like the idea enough, to see it get made.

It’s called Appswell, and it launched yesterday. The idea behind the Cambridge, MA-based startup, the brainchild of a young serial Web entrepreneur named Dan Sullivan, is to take advantage of the collective creativity of iPhone users to come up with the next great money-making app, and give everyone a chance to share in the proceeds.

Anyone with an iPhone can submit an idea to Appswell or vote on other users’ ideas. Each month, the company will turn the most popular idea into an app, and reward the creator with a $1,000 cash prize and a stake in future sales.

“Rather than a bunch of developers putting 20 things on a whiteboard, we think we have a method of engaging thousands of people,” says Sullivan. “For the consumer who has a great idea in his head but isn’t a developer and will never build it, we are narrowing the gap for getting that idea tested and vetted and turning it into reality.”

Appropriately, there’s just one way to submit an idea for an app: through Appswell’s own free iPhone app. (The app, and the company itself, were ready to launch back in mid-September, when I first met Sullivan. But like so many other companies, Appswell had to wait for weeks while the still-mysterious iTunes App Store approval process inched forward. Sullivan finally got the okay last night.)

The app itself couldn’t be simpler. To submit an idea, users simply create an account, click “Add your idea,” and enter a name, a category, and a short text description. Users can also browse ideas submitted by others by category, popularity, or recentness. If you see an app idea you like, you can vote for it, comment on it, or share it via e-mail or Twitter.

At the end of each month, Sullivan says, the company will hold a week-long, American Idol-style showdown between the five most popular app ideas. The winning idea will be turned into an actual app by Appswell’s developers—assuming that it’s pitched at general consumers, can be sold for $1 to $2, and meets Apple’s standards. The winner gets the cash prize plus 10 percent of future proceeds from the app.

The Appswell app is so new that users have submitted only a couple dozen ideas so far, some of which were seeded by beta testers, according to Sullivan. The most popular idea, as of this morning, was for a “sound board maker” that would let users make short sound recordings and edit them into comical audio clips.

Sullivan says he believes Appswell is the first company to try the crowdsourcing model in the iPhone app arena. But he thinks the experiences of companies in other markets—he points to Threadless‘s T-shirts and Local Motors‘ car design competitions—bode well for his startup. The beauty of Appswell’s model, he says, is that … Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

[Corrected 9/28/09: Chase Jarvis is based in Seattle, not San Francisco. I regret the error and apologize to our Seattle readers!] Seattle-based commercial photographer Chase Jarvis is known for his arresting, color-saturated images of people in motion—skiing, swimming, somersaulting. He’s also known for (literally) trademarking the phrase “the best camera is the one you have with you.” His point is that you don’t an expensive SLR to take great pictures. You can do a lot with the camera in your pocket or purse—which more likely than not is a camera phone.

This week, Jarvis took his slogan to the next level, launching a trio of products—a book, an iPhone application, and a photo-sharing community on the Web—intended to encourage all photographers, pro and amateur alike, to get more creative with their camera phones. This cross-media campaign is a brilliant concept—both as a digital-arts-education project and as a piece of self-promotion for Jarvis and his studio—and it also happens to fit in really well with the theme I’ve been writing about in this space throughout September in “Seven Projects to Stretch your Digital Wings,” Parts 1, 2, and 3. So, if you’ve got an iPhone, go spend $2.99 on Jarvis’s app, called “Best Camera,” and consider today’s column Project #8.

Original

Jewel

Paris

Slate

Candy

There are more than 1,300 photography-related apps in the iTunes App Store, but as far as I know, Best Camera is the only one that comes with a dedicated community of other iPhone users. The app allows you to take a picture with the iPhone’s built-in camera, apply a range of cool digital filters and effects, and then upload your finished photo to a gallery that’s constantly being updated, in real time, with new photos from other Best Camera users. You can give the photos you like best a thumbs-up, and browse photos either by popularity or recentness.

In addition to introducing you to a bunch of other creative souls, Best Camera will let you play with your own images and perhaps invent your own new styles. That’s thanks to a surprisingly flexible interface for applying various filters to your raw images and changing the order in which the filters are “stacked.” The filters themselves go well beyond the typical gray-scaling, contrast-enhancing, or redeye-reducing algorithms you’ll see in other iPhone image editing apps: working with Übermind, a Seattle software development firm that specializes in photography-related applications for desktops and mobile phones, Jarvis dreamed up a dozen effects altogether, including four “signature filters” inspired by his own photographic styles.

It’s hard to describe the signature effects in words, but one filter, called “Jewel,” gives photos a warm, rich, almost antique look, while another called “Candy” creates an intense, high-contrast, caffeinated feeling reminiscent of Jarvis’s advertising photography. At left, I’ve lined up examples of the same photo from my own iPhone album, altered using the “Jewel,” “Paris,” “Slate,” and “Candy” filters, respectively.

As someone who loves to spend time looking at other people’s photos and trying to understand their styles—I could spend hours using the “Explore” feature at Flickr—I think the community feature of Best Camera is especially fun. It’s a nice feeling to upload a picture and then see it appear in the public gallery, which is accessible right from the app. You can browse the gallery from a desktop browser, too, at www.thebestcamera.com; the bonus, if you go there, is that the “recipe” used for each photo—that is, the combination and order of digital effects the photographer chose—shows up right alongside the image. (You can see all of my Best Camera photos here.)

Jarvis certainly isn’t the only professional photographer singing the praises of camera phones. Shawn Rocco, a staff photojournalist at the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC, shoots with a long-since-obsolete Motorola E815 mobile phone. In fact, the American art world seems to be developing a bit of a fetish for … Next Page »

Comments (10) | Reprints | Share:          

Hillsboro, OR-based TriQuint Semiconductor (NASDAQ: TQNT) announced today it has acquired TriAccess Technologies, based in Santa Rosa, CA. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TriAccess makes integrated-circuit amplifiers for audio, video, and HDTV applications. TriQuint Semiconductor, founded in 1985, makes wireless communication technologies for mobile manufacturers, cellular base stations, and defense and aerospace contractors.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

[Update, April 21, 2009: The third RunKeeper video has now been posted.]

Maybe Jason Jacobs’ foot injury wasn’t quite as bad as he was suggesting last week. Just minutes ago the CEO of Boston-based FitnessKeeper, which makes a popular iPhone run-tracking application called RunKeeper, crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon with a very respectable time of 3:55:07. Not bad for someone who’s battling a serious case of plantar fasciitis—and wearing a lycra iPhone costume.

As we explained Friday, Jacobs decided three weeks ago to run the marathon dressed as an iPhone as part of a social media campaign for RunKeeper organized by a group of Emerson College marketing communications undergraduates. The students are producing a series of viral Web videos about the marathon preparations; the second video came out last week, and a third, about the actual race, will appear sometime soon. [Update: the third video been posted here.]

The dramatic crux of the “Apprentice”-style videos is the team’s concern over Jacobs’ recurring foot injury, which prevented him from doing much training for the marathon. But given that Jacobs maintained a pace averaging 8 minutes 58 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles, and placed 14,217th in a field of more than 26,000, it would seem that his injury was not a massive impediment.

Jacobs, who raised more than $2,500 for the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital as part of its “Race for Rehab” team, took the term “mobile computing” to heart during the race, using his iPhone to send out frequent updates about his progress. You can read the Twitter posts he pecked out here and see the runners’-eye-view pictures he uploaded to TwitPic here. You can also see the route of his run, as recorded by RunKeeper, here.

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share:          

Here at Xconomy, we love our iPhones and Blackberries and Windows Mobile smartphones, and we love the local companies that create cool software and services for them. In fact, we love them so much we’re organizing an April 7 conference on “The Future of Mobile Innovation in New England“—and we’re looking for companies who want to show off their latest, coolest technologies in a series of two-minute, onstage “mobile bursts.”

If your company is based in New England, has a mobile application or service that can be demonstrated live (no PowerPoints), and you’d like to nominate yourselves to participate, please send me a note at wroush@xconomy.com. We’ll pick five or six companies, who’ll have a chance to show their wares to a big audience at Microsoft’s New England R&D Center in Cambridge, MA.

The meeting, scheduled for 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a networking reception to follow, is designed to focus on fundamental questions about the technologies and business models that will keep the mobile industry growing through the recession and beyond. It’ll be jam-packed with keynote presentations, panel discussions, and intimate chats with local mobile-technology luminaries and investors, including representatives of Apperian, Enterprise Mobile, Charles River Ventures, FitnessKeeper, Flybridge Capital Partners, Google, Microsoft, the MIT Media Lab, MocoSpace, Quattro Wireless, Skyhook Wireless, Veveo, and Vlingo. The full agenda for the conference is here. If you’re interested in attending, you can buy advance tickets here.

Until March 13, tickets are available at the early bird rate of $125; after that the price goes up to $195. Student tickets are available for $50, and students are eligible for scholarships under Flybridge’s Stay in MA program.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

A growing number of online media companies offer mobile-friendly versions of their articles or videos, often resizing or stripping down the material to make it more easily accessible on smaller screens, and at lower bandwidth. But if you’re a cell phone owner who wants to spend a few minutes scanning mobile sites, there’s a problem. While there are services that aggregate specific types of mobile media, such as Veveo’s vtap for videos, there’s no central place to scan all of the most popular mobile content.

Today, however, Denver, CO-based Buzzwire is launching just such a service. The 20-employee startup, which obtained $4 million in venture funding from Boston’s Spark Capital and Matrix Partners in 2007, is rolling out a new community-driven website at m.buzzwire.com that collects mobile-friendly content from around the Internet, including sources like CNN, The Boston Globe, ABC.com, Slashdot, The New York Times, and People. It’s “something that hasn’t been done in mobile—a kind of mashup of Digg and Yahoo Buzz,” says founder, chairman, and chief product officer Andrew MacFarlane.

Some of the stories and videos listed on the site are selected by Buzzwire’s editors, and others are sent in by users—but all of it’s been vetted to make sure that it’s easily accessible from the user’s mobile device. The service is similar to Digg in that many of the stories are contributed by readers, and it’s similar to Yahoo Buzz in that stories are ranked according to how many people are clicking on them and sharing them. It differs from both Digg and Yahoo Buzz, however, in that users can’t actually vote stories up or down—the rankings are calculated by Buzzwire’s own algorithms.

When Buzzwire launched in 2007, it was tackling a very different problem: delivering actual streaming audio and video to cellular subscribers’ phones. And that’s still part of the company’s business—AT&T, Verizon, and Alltel use its platform, among others. But the new mobile content aggregation site “is what we meant to do from the beginning,” says MacFarlane. “We are big believers in the mobile Web. Ultimately, mobile devices are going to vastly outnumber PCs in terms of how content is addressed on the Internet, and we’re just trying to design a service that makes finding good content as easy as possible.”

Readers will like the service because the ranking algorithms will generally favor the highest-quality content, and publishers will like it because it will drive more traffic to their mobile sites, MacFarlane says. “This year 60 to 70 percent of publishers say they’re trying to figure out how to adapt content for and attract traffic to their mobile websites,” he says. “This is a place where users can go to find what’s interesting, we’ll send the traffic off to the original sources.”

Publishers can keep the cycle going by including buttons on their mobile websites that allow users to automatically share their favorite content at Buzzwire. MacFarlane says these so-called “Buzzie” buttons are “the first sharing buttons in the mobile world”—TV Guide Online is one of the first publishers to adopt them. But even if a story doesn’t have a Buzzie button, readers can send a link to Buzzwire via e-mail (to post@buzzwire.com) or text message (to the short code BUZZ9 or 28999).

Buzzwire earns money on the new portal through the advertisements interspersed with the story listings. The mobile advertising business is in turmoil, with many companies in the space hard-pressed to recruit as many advertisers as they or their publishing partners would like. But for the service’s introductory “beta” period, Buzzwire has struck a deal with a single advertising agency, New York-based Deutsch, to fill up all of the available ad inventory on its mobile directory. So for now, Deutsch clients such as DirecTV, Kodak, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation have exclusive advertising rights at m.buzzwire.com. And after the beta period, according to MacFarlane, the company expects to work with other agencies and advertising networks to create “rich video advertising” tailored for specific types of mobile handsets. (Publishers can usually charge advertisers a higher rate for video ads than for typical text or display ads.)

Buzzwire gained a high-profile leader in December in the shape of CEO Greg Osberg, the former president and worldwide publisher of Newsweek and Newsweek.com and the former president of sales and marketing for CNET. MacFarlane, who had been CEO prior to Osberg’s arrival, continues to direct the company’s product strategy. He says the company has between 20 and 30 employees, all based in Denver. (Buzzwire had a Boston office until summer 2008, but closed it to cut costs, MacFarlane says.)

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Redmond, WA-based Mobui, a mobile applications startup, has received an equity investment from Teletouch Communications, a Fort Worth, TX-based cellular services provider and retailer. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mobui will use the funds to expand its software development and customer operations, while Teletouch gets access to Mobui’s applications being built to run on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android G1, and other handsets.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

In most New England technology sectors, mid-2008 marked the start of a steep downward tumble in venture, IPO, and M&A activity. But not so for mobile technology. According to a report released today by Mobile Monday Boston, the local mobile industry boomed in 2008, with the total amount of money raised shooting past the $500 million mark for the first time.

The dramatic increase in activity put an end to four flat years in which New England mobile fundraising varied between $320 and $390 million per year. The exact 2008 total reported by the 101 participants in the Mobile Monday Boston study was $566 million, a 45 percent increase over the 2007 number. See the chart below; the figures, which include money raised through venture investments, IPOs, and acquisitions, are also detailed on the Mobile Monday Boston website.

It’s the first time the group—the local chapter of Mobile Monday, a worldwide organization for mobile-industry professionals—has aggregated such figures. “We wanted to quantitatively demonstrate the strong growth of mobile and wireless in Boston over the last few years,” says Kate Imbach, a Mobile Monday Boston co-founder and organizer who is also director of marketing at Boston’s Skyhook Wireless. “We’ve watched the total number of companies here grow and seen strong investments in mobile, but couldn’t draw solid conclusions about how the space has changed and where it’s going before we put these numbers together.”

The number of mobile companies based in and around Boston has exploded in recent years. MoMoBoston’s survey showed that only 10 local mobile companies raised money in 2002. In 2008, 45 companies received investments.

Altogether, Mobile Monday Boston counts 180 companies in the mobile space in New England. (Our “Greater Boston Mobile Technology Cluster” list, published three weeks ago, was based largely on a member list shared by the organization.) Mobile application and software builders form the largest group within the local mobile industry (39 companies), followed by marketing (14 companies), advertising (15), voice recognition (14), content (13), hardware (11), and infrastructure (11).

MoMoBoston didn’t detect any dropoff in mobile investment as 2008 progressed: the total of $562 million was invested in fairly even chunks across the four quarters, with a slight spike in the second quarter.

“The report is very encouraging,” Imbach says. “With over half of a billion dollars invested in 2008 and 180 very diverse companies operating locally, Boston has quietly developed into the worldwide hub of mobile and wireless.”

Adding up the funds invested in each company over time, MoMoBoston found that Boston-area mobile companies have raised some $4.63 billion altogether. And that fundraising success is likely to continue, at least for a while, says Chris Hazelton, wireless and mobile research director at The 451 Group, a market research firm with offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington.

“While not immune to the economic downturn, mobile software and services will continue to be a key area for investment over the next 18 months, due to long product development cycles and only a slightly muted growth rate in sales of smartphones,” Hazelton said in Mobile Monday Boston’s announcement today. “Investors are still excited about the mobile space, and with a significant academic and technology base, Boston is the place to watch for acquisitions and investments in mobile.”

Comments | Reprints | Share: