Sony Ericsson, the London-based mobile handset maker, is shutting its Seattle-area office, as first reported by Engadget and Triangle Business Journal. Sony Ericsson is cutting about 2,000 out of 9,900 jobs globally, including closing offices in Research Triangle Park, San Diego, Miami, Kista, Sweden, and Chennai, India. The moves are part of a company-wide restructuring that includes moving its North American headquarters from Research Triangle Park to Atlanta, GA.

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I sat in on a good venture capital panel yesterday at Mobile Northwest 2009 in Seattle. No huge arguments or chair throwing to speak of (we’ll see what we can stir up at the next few Xconomy Forums). But some solid and useful observations from Geoff Entress of Voyager Capital, and also a prominent Seattle-based angel investor; Adrian Smith of Ignition Partners in Bellevue, WA, an expert in telecom and wireless; and Puneet Tandon of Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA, who is looking to sign partnerships with top entrepreneurs in digital media and social networking. (You can also see some comments from mobile VC Tom Huseby’s keynote here.)

The panel was moderated by Tricia Duryee, the Seattle-based correspondent for mocoNews, a website that covers wireless telecommunications. Here are my quick “top three” takeaways from the discussion of the local mobile industry:

1. The panic may be over, but caution rules. Entress says he’s added nine companies to his portfolio this year, out of a total of 32 he’s involved in (and six mobile firms, including TravellingWave, Swype, Dashwire, and Treemo). “We’re definitely not out of the woods yet,” he said. “But 2010 might be a good year for selling companies.”

2. It’s not all about the iPhone. Entress and Smith pointed out that Apple has only 17 percent of the smartphone market, so there’s plenty of opportunity on other platforms, like the BlackBerry and devices that use Windows Mobile. “Apple has a huge amount of mindshare,” Smith said, “but the critical thing is the development environment around [mobile applications].” Tandon agreed, saying, “Barriers to doing business with us [carriers] perhaps have been lowered.” Entress stressed the importance, especially for startups, of trying to avoid “getting locked into any one carrier, handset, or operating system.”

3. Watch advertising, input technologies, and connected devices. Tandon pointed out that by sometime next year, there are projected to be 3.3 billion Web-connected devices, and 70 percent of them will be connected via wireless operators. That means carriers will be willing to pay to know “who are the social influencers in your subscriber base,” he said. Smith and Entress said Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob signifies that mobile advertising is here to stay—but that the deal was the “first one out” (like YouTube for video), so don’t look for anything near that sort of valuation again. Entress added that he’s working with a number of startups selling new ways of inputting text on mobile devices (using speech recognition, touch-screen methods, and so forth). For all our fancy gadgets, it seems we still struggle to communicate.

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[Corrected 11/11/09, 3:15 pm. See below] Qualcomm chief operating officer, Len Lauer, says the San Diego wireless chipmaking giant is working across a broad front of technology development to accommodate a surge in wireless data traffic.

“The mobile Internet has arrived,” Lauer says in the opening keynote talk yesterday at the 2009 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference. With more than 4 billion wireless subscribers around the world now—including 885 million 3G phone users—Lauer says the growth in wireless data is reflected by a roughly one-third increase in revenue reported over the past year by Verizon, AT&T, and other major carriers.

[Corrects to say Lauer was comparing monthly data traffic in 2014, not monthly growth in data traffic] By 2014, or just five years, Lauer says  worldwide mobile data traffic in one month will exceed total mobile data traffic for all of 2008.

Qualcomm founder and former chairman and CEO Irwin Jacobs and his son Paul Jacobs, who is Qualcomm’s current chairman and CEO, sounded a similar theme when they warned of capacity constraints last month during a keynote appearance at the CTIA Fall 2009 conference in San Diego.

In addition to the increasing demand for mobile data from smart phones and netbooks, Lauer says the trend can only accelerate as new wireless device categories proliferate, especially in what he calls machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Examples of M2M technology developers include CardioNet, a Pennsylvania wireless health company that uses wireless sensors to continuously monitor heart patients for irregular heartbeats; wireless smart grid technologies being deployed by electric utilities (including San Diego Gas & Electric), and eBook devices like Amazon’s Kindle.

“Other operators are seeing this as a viable market, but it is going to take awhile to develop,” Lauer says, citing estimates that 229 million M2M cellular connections are forecast for 2013. “We do see from Qualcomm’s standpoint this being a very large opportunity for our chips.”

To cope with the surge in wireless data traffic, Lauer outlined a range of technology advances that Qualcomm has underway:

—The latest generation of advanced wireless receivers, which include updated revisions to the EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) telecommunications standard (part of Qualcomm’s CDMA2000 family), operate …Next Page »

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It was a busy week for local technology news.

—Two teams from San Diego and a third from Northern California demonstrated their development of advanced chemical sensor prototypes that are tiny enough to be found inside ordinary cell phones. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is funding the Cell-All program, with a goal of basically creating an anti-terrorism app for cell phones that would enable authorities to crowd-source chemical detection.

—MaxLinear has filed for its initial public stock offering. The Carlsbad, CA-based fabless chipmaker, which specializes in designing semiconductor-based television receivers, intends to raise about $100 million through its IPO. The market may be de-frosting a bit, with 47 IPOs so far in 2009, compared with 45 last year, and 272 in 2007.

—ProQuo, a San Diego-based Web 2.0 company that was founded in 2007, was quietly shut down after taking in a total of $15 million in venture capital from Menlo Park, CA-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson and San Diego-based Mission Ventures. ProQuo was never able to validate its business model; its website offered consumers a way to remove their names from mass-mailing lists for free, and the company planned to sell its optimized lists back to mass marketing companies.

—San Diego’s wireless industry group, CommNexus, celebrated the opening of EvoNexus, its free high-tech incubator, by announcing the selection of three more startup companies: EcoATM, MicroPower Technologies, and TetraVue. CommNexus CEO Rory Moore says EvoNexus is believed to be the first incubator that is completely free for startups—that is, it doesn’t even require an equity stake in participating companies, as most incubuators do.

—Jitterbug, the San Diego wireless provider that puts an emphasis on simplicity, has acquired MobiWatch, a Waltham, MA-based startup developing mobile personal emergency response services. A regulatory filing shows that Jitterbug’s parent, GreatCall, provided 630,000 shares of common stock to MobiWatch and its shareholders in a deal valued at $107,100.

—San Diego-based Networkfleet is using its technology to help companies that operate fleets of vehicles go green by monitoring engine emissions and ensuring that vehicles are operating efficiently. Co-founder Diego Borrego told me the company also expects to be a player as consolidations sweep through the fleet tracking industry.

—EcoDog, a Vista, CA, cleantech startup that has developed a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill, was named best of show at GadgetFest, the annual fall competition sponsored by CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group. EcoDog founding CEO Ron Pitt won over the crowd when he declared, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

—San Diego-based cleantech startup EESG is looking to raise $1.2 million to expand the 10-employee company’s sales staff, purchase inventory, and ramp up public relations and marketing. The company’s founders told me they have raised about half so far, including $300,000 from Longboard Capital Advisors, a green investment firm based in Santa Monica, CA.

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The moderators of San Diego’s 9th Annual GadgetFest kept saying during Tuesday night’s showcase for new technology products that past winners have gone on to even greater glory and success. That may or may not be good news for the Motorola Droid that goes on sale tomorrow at Verizon stores nationwide. After making a cursory appearance at CTIA and perhaps elsewhere, the Droid debuted its impressive features and ended the evening as runner-up.

GadgetFest moderators Ken Rutkowski and Andy Abramson reminded the audience that Grand Central, a GadgetFest winner three years ago, was acquired shortly after the 2006 event by Google (and has since been transformed into Google Voice). They also pointed to Motorola’s Q Phone, Sling Media’s Slingbox, and the Truphone as paragons of GadgetFest virtue. All three devices were introduced at GadgetFest instead of the CTIA or other major trade shows, according to CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group that sponsors the event.

So expectations were high. But the Droid, with all its iPhone-slaying hoopla, finished the GadgetFest competition in a dead-heat with EcoDog, a local cleantech startup that trotted out Fido—a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill. The GadgetFest judges ultimately proclaimed EcoDog this year’s best in show after the Vista, CA-based company received perceptibly more-boisterous applause from the audience in the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall at Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters.

At the end of the show, while the judges were deciding how to resolve the tie, one of the moderators asked EcoDog founder and CEO Ron Pitt if he had anything more to say. He replied, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

So what are the up and coming gadgets that got previewed at GadgetFest? Here’s a rundown, just in time for the Christmas shopping season:

—TelCentris, the San Diego-based provider of unified communications services, presented an update to its VoxOx system, which aggregates voice over Internet technology, text messaging, instant messaging, serial conferencing, file sharing, and e-mail onto one user interface. As TelCentris executives explained to me in July, the company makes most …Next Page »

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Seattle-based Movaya Wireless, a mobile software startup, has been acquired by Digby, a mobile commerce firm based in Austin, TX. Financial terms were not announced. Movaya was founded in 2006 by Phil Yerkes and Stanley Wang, and recently has been focused on making digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android, and other mobile Web platforms. The company has a development team in China that will serve as the basis for Digby’s operations in Asia.

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Call it the iPhone “2G.” Two Seattle-area startups that start with the letter “G” are rolling out new iPhone apps today. OK, this would not normally make significant news for us, because new apps appear on a daily basis, but each of these cases provides an interesting update to the company’s mobile strategy, so here we go:

—Glympse has been on a tear since May, when co-founder and CEO Bryan Trussel said the Seattle-area company first started offering its location-sharing service on mobile phones. The idea of the software is that your friends and business contacts can get an immediate “glympse” of where you are on a map, automatically, for a certain amount of time that you set. Today’s announcement that Glympse is available as a free download on the iPhone is no surprise. Last week, the startup’s service was named a showcase application in Windows Marketplace for Mobile, and the company has been working on its iPhone app for some time. It’s all part of Glympse’s strategy to build a mass-consumer audience based on a free service, before working up to paid models and location-based ads.

—Gist has also been picking up steam, in a very different market. The Seattle-based company, led by founder and CEO T.A. McCann, focuses on giving consumers and business customers information about their e-mail and social-network contacts in a quick and easy way. The goal is to help people manage their relationships more efficiently, for example, by feeding them updates from all over the Web about their contacts. Gist opened up to the public last month, and McCann told me then that the company had done some optimization for the iPhone and was more broadly improving its mobile version. The new iPhone app, which is free, makes sense for busy professionals who want to scan the latest info on whoever they’re meeting next, from blogs, articles, and social media, right before their appointment. It also fits into Gist’s strategy for bridging e-mail, search, and social media in order to help people manage all that information.

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A lot of fingers were crossed behind the scenes at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment conference, which ended today at the San Diego Convention Center. Many extraneous factors can affect attendance at big industry shows, but organizers did not want a repeat of the last time the CTIA came to San Diego, when the opening day for the conference was Sept. 11, 2001.

About 15,000 people attended this week, the same turnout as last year’s conference in San Francisco, according to spokeswoman Cheryl Delgreco. The highlight on the final day was the “Fund Fest,” in which entrepreneurs from Seattle, Washington D.C., and other cities made five-minute presentations to an onstage panel of three judges. Five finalists, including two from Seattle, emerged from a group of 50 companies that were screened by event organizers.

All five finalists received a complimentary exhibit and marketing package for a 2010 CTIA event valued at more than $25,000, and a block of public relations consulting time. All five finalists also will make encore presentations, along with 15 additional companies at the MobiTechFest in Santa Clara, CA, on Oct. 29, according to a spokeswoman for MobiTechFest.

The companies are:

—Mjedi, based in Seattle, is developing a software platform for mobile social commerce that enables people who are out shopping to consult with their friends by using their cell phone to send product images to their home page on Facebook. Founding CEO Chander Chawla says the company’s target market is composed of “teen-agers and women who like to talk before making a purchase.”

—ParkVu, based in Sunnyvale, CA, has developed software that enables users to wirelessly download their entire iTunes library, photos, and other files from their computer to their BlackBerry and other smartphones. Co-founder and CEO Terry Goertz says their technology “frees your smartphone from your desktop permanently.”

—Billing Revolution, based in Seattle, presented technology that enables mobile phone users to buy pizzas, ski lift tickets, and other merchandise directly from merchants. Founding CEO Andy Kleitsch says the company’s software is “a layer that sits on top of merchants’ existing credit card processing system. Kletsch says his company, which raised $2 million earlier this year from a South Korean telecom, is currently preparing to raise another $4 million in Series B funding.

—Chyngle, a San Francisco-based startup, develops custom white label mobile applications for shopping malls, amusement parks, and sports and concert stadiums. Chyngle, which is developing its application initially for Major League Baseball stadiums and other professional sporting venues, says its technology provides background information and statistics about teams and players and enables users to buy sports merchandise and other items. It also serves as a social networking tool that enables friends to meet, share rides, and exchange messages. For each stadium, CEO Todd Sullivan says, “We are that venue’s in-pocket marketing tool.” The presentation wowed the judges, who gave Chyngle the Champion award.

—TelCare, based near Washington D.C., has developed a wireless device for diabetics that enables them to both test their blood sugar and transmit the data to their doctor or caregiver. Founder Jonathan Javitt says the real-time connectivity maintains a more accurate record of tests, and makes it unnecessary for patients to keep their own test paperwork. Javitt says the wireless connectivity also can improve compliance by sending reminders to patients, and that according to one study, using the device reduced amputations, strokes, blindness and other complications of diabetes by 37 percent. TelCare received the CTIA’s People’s Choice award from attendees in the audience who voted by text message.

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An interesting tidbit from the mobile industry: Film cameras are going out of style, while camera phones have become ubiquitous. But even as the popularity of things like mobile data plans and text messaging continues to grow in the U.S., people still have problems doing simple things with photos on their phones.

That’s according to an annual survey of wireless consumers conducted by Ontela, a Seattle-based mobile software startup. The latest results, from a poll of 414 U.S. residents, were released today to coincide with the start of the International CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment expo in San Diego. Nothing earth-shattering here, but the results give some context for understanding certain segments of the mobile market.

The survey found that less than half of respondents (48 percent) this year owned a traditional film camera. That’s down from 61 percent in 2008, and 67 percent in 2007. By contrast, 87 percent of respondents said they owned a mobile phone with a camera—up from 78 percent in 2008, and 70 percent in 2007.

More than half of those surveyed (52 percent) had a text messaging plan, as compared with 28 percent last year. And 27 percent had a mobile data plan, compared to 16 percent last year. Despite the rising rates of mobile expertise, though, 61 percent of respondents said they are unable to upload a photo from their phone to the Web.

If these trends hold for the general population, they represent a big market opportunity for Ontela, which makes mobile software that automatically sends photos and other digital media from your phone to your inbox, computer, or photo-sharing site. The company sells its software to wireless carriers, who in turn bundle and sell the service to subscribers.

Ontela was formed in 2005, and is backed by about $15 million in venture funding from Steamboat Ventures, Oak Investment Partners, Hunt Ventures, Voyager Capital, and Eastven Venture Partners. Back in March, Ontela’s CEO, Dan Shapiro, noted in an Xconomist post that mobile phones are in fact poised to kill off point-and-shoot cameras, both digital and film, for good.

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Paul Allen, the Seattle-area billionaire who co-founded Microsoft, has agreed to sell 24 licenses for wireless spectrum in Washington and Oregon to AT&T, according to a report by Bloomberg News, which cites filings with the Federal Communications Commission. The price of the sale, which has not yet been approved by the FCC, is not disclosed.

A unit of AT&T called Mobility II is acquiring the licenses from Allen’s Vulcan Spectrum, based in Seattle. The spectrum covers airwaves in the 700 megahertz frequency range—the former “UHF” television band freed up for wireless use this year. According to Bloomberg, AT&T (NYSE: ATT) wants the licenses to support its introduction of “long-term evolution,” a next-generation wireless broadband service that competes with the WiMax service from Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR). Vulcan still owns licenses for other parts of the wireless spectrum in Seattle, Portland, and other areas.

Back in May, managing director Steve Hall of Vulcan Capital, Allen’s venture organization, told us that the investments in wireless spectrum fit into a broader focus on the mobile industry. Vulcan invested in two spectrum auctions, Hall said—one in 2003 (where the licenses in question come from) and one in 2008, deploying about $130 million in total. “We saw the scarcity of spectrum, running against what we believe demand is for appliances, devices, smartphones, iPhone,” Hall said at the time. Vulcan’s view, he added, was that infrastructure was “the best way to play.”

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A small Seattle-area company is blazing a trail in the crowded field of mobile marketing. Kirkland, WA-based HipCricket, a company founded in 2004 to do mobile marketing for brands and media companies, has been growing its revenue significantly from quarter to quarter and aims to be profitable for the first time by the end of this year.

It’s a big step for HipCricket, which has been diligently chirping away in a nascent but noisy industry. Mobile marketing essentially just means advertising via mobile devices. The sector has gained in popularity since the rise of text messaging, particularly in Europe and Asia. But marketing firms, at least in the U.S., have largely struggled to make much money in mobile. So HipCricket makes for a compelling case study in how to deliver the goods for big brands—all while helping create a new industry.

On Friday, I spoke with Ivan Braiker, HipCricket’s co-founder and chief executive, after his talk at a Northwest Entrepreneur Network venture breakfast. Braiker previously co-founded Satellite Music Network, the first radio network to distribute live, 24-hour satellite programming. He has extensive experience in building radio networks and in the broadcasting industry.

Things at HipCricket have been very busy, he says. “Even in the down economy, the activity level has been incredible,” Braiker says. “Mobile is getting to be better understood on the brand level.” He didn’t disclose any specific sales numbers.

The company was self-funded in its early days, followed by a friends and family round, and then a round of outside investment. HipCricket went public on London’s Alternative Investment Market in November 2007, only to be de-listed this summer after the markets crashed. The firm, which is now privately held, is backed by some prominent investors, including Joe Schocken from Seattle-based Broadmark Capital.

One of its key advantages is its deep relationships in broadcasting. HipCricket’s customers include some 300 local and national radio and TV stations, including KZOK, KUBE, and KOMO-TV in Seattle, and KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. The company also does marketing for about 50 brands, including Arby’s, Macy’s, Coca-Cola, Rite Aid Pharmacy, and Harley-Davidson. “It’s all about creating engaged communities,” Braiker says.

The technology is important too. HipCricket’s software and services, for which it charges a subscription fee, lets broadcasters and brands track response rates to ads based on keywords, type of media, or time of day—all in real-time. Braiker says this is a key differentiator for his business. “There’s a new vendor every day that gets into this. But they don’t understand the millions of dollars of software we have that parses data and comes up with sophisticated analytics,” he says.

HipCricket, which has just shy of 60 employees (it has added nine so far this year), now seems to be growing steadily. Earlier this year, the company expanded to Mexico and is seeing a fair bit of growth in the Latino advertising community. In the next few months, Braiker says, HipCricket will be pursuing some “new, unique things” in the mobile space, including “mobile coupons integrated with point of sale,” a mobile billing service that bypasses wireless carriers, and other e-commerce applications. “We see HipCricket as a full-service mobile marketing company,” he says.

Asked for his advice to entrepreneurs in the sector, Braiker says, “Understand you’re going to need endless energy. You have to clearly see your vision, you have to understand that vision, and never stop evangelizing. If you believe you’re right, you have to stay with it.” He adds that the most important factor in success is, in a word, “tenaciousness.”

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Sequoia Communications CEO Dave Shepard was out of town last week when the demise of the San Diego fabless semiconductor design company came to light. I was told he was furious over the shutdown, as Sequoia had finished its product, a chip for use in cellphones and wireless devices, had secured customers, and was roughly a year from breaking even. The explanation was that the eight-year-old startup had been unable to raise the additional venture capital.

But if he was upset, the semiconductor CEO had processed the news, so to speak, by the time I finally reached him yesterday. Instead of talking from Sequoia’s ground zero, Shepard spoke from a considerably higher altitude, saying, in effect, that the problems that swamped the San Diego startup chipmaker extend well beyond the company itself.

“The issue is bigger than Sequoia Communications,” Shepard says. “I think the venture-backed model for semiconductor startups is broken. The complexity of these chips has just gotten so high, it just takes so much money to fund a startup nowadays, that to the VCs, it’s just not worth it.”

In a nutshell, Shepard says semiconductor startups are getting squeezed by sharply higher costs and dramatically lower valuations. A new chip technology that would have required two to three years and $15 million to $30 million in startup funding to get to proof of concept a few years ago now requires five to eight years and something closer to $80 million. For that kind of startup capital, Shepard says VCs want to see semiconductor buyouts of $400 million to $500 million. But deal values have plunged. At a meeting organized earlier this month by CommNexus, San Diego’s non-profit wireless industry association, one presenter said the median value of 97 semiconductor M&A transactions in 2000 was $484.1 million. In 2003, there were only 47 deals and the median deal size was just $144.5 million. The trend has worsened with the economic downturn, and Shepard says valuations for semiconductor startups are now in the range of $75 million to $100 million.

Shepard says he was unable to sell Sequoia, even though the company had contracted with several customers in China and had a finished product—a sophisticated multi-mode transceiver designed to accommodate the burgeoning market for various 3G mobile phones. In addition to transmitting and receiving standard cell signals, Shepard says Sequoia’s transceivers perform multiple functions, such as translating analog RF signals into the digital code used by mobile devices.

After raising close to $75 million from VCs and other investors, Shepard estimates Sequoia was about a year away from breaking even. The company, which had about 30 employees, needed to raise an additional $10 million. Sequoia’s investors instead decided to cease operations in mid-July. (By last week, auctioneers were preparing to sell the company’s remaining assets and Shepard was taking a break in Lake Tahoe.)

“The VCs just got tired,” Shepard says. “Half of our VCs were out of money, and the other half had been in the company for a long time. So they were looking at a low return on their investment.”

He adds, “It’s not really anybody’s fault. I’m not mad at the VCs.”

He maintains that what happened to the San Diego startup “is not a Sequoia-specific problem.” The changing economics of semiconductor innovation have ramifications for the entire industry, he says, because the big chipmaking companies like Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD have traditionally counted on smaller startups as a key source of their innovation.

Worldwide, Goldman Sachs data shows semiconductor M&A transactions declining from 137 deals with a total value of $33.7 billion in 1999 to 86 deals with a total value of $2.2 billion so far in 2009. Semiconductor IPOs have been practically non-existent this year, with Goldman Sachs showing 10 deals worldwide with a total value of $43 million. The CommNexus meeting, which Shepard helped organize, was billed as “Endangered Species Alert: Fabless Semiconductor Startups Threatened With Extinction!”

Shepard says he not sure how the broader problem is going to get solved. It’s possible that China could move into the semiconductor R&D vacuum, although that could raise broader issues for U.S. economic policy. “The semiconductor industry is a sensitive area that touches everything,” he says.

Meanwhile, an online auction of Sequoia’s office furniture and electronic testing equipment is set to begin today.

The company’s most-valued assets, the design database for the chip and its intellectual property, including Sequoia’s portfolio of 20 issued U.S. patents and 15 patent applications, will be sold through a separate process. Proceeds will go to the investors. “I have no idea what the value is, but it will be under $10 million,” Shepard says. “It will be vastly less than what they put in.”

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San Diego’s Sequoia Communications, a venture-backed semiconductor company founded in 2001, has shut down—ending the startup’s effort to develop an innovative microchip for cellular phones. The company’s demise was reported yesterday by the website SoCalTech.com, which noted that Sequoia has raised more than $50 million from BlueRun Ventures, Cadence Design Systems, Gabriel Venture Partners, Huntington Ventures, Motorola, Nokia Venture Partners, Tallwood Venture Capital, and Third Point Ventures.

Rory Moore, CEO of CommNexus, the San Diego non-profit wireless industry group, confirmed the closure in a terse e-mail to me, saying simply that Sequoia’s VCs “pulled the plug.” Additional details were not available late yesterday, including the number of employees who lost their jobs. (The chipmaker had about 50 employees two years ago.) Sequoia’s former CEO, Dave Shepard, could not be reached for comment.

In a 2007 Q&A with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Shepard said the wireless chip under development at Sequoia was intended for the high-end phone market. “Our chip actually makes those high-end phones have much better battery life, much better cost, and much smaller form factor, so they get into a smaller phone size,” Shepard said at the time. He also described the wireless chip as “multi-mode,” saying, “It works in GSM, Edge and wideband CDMA, which are all the different phone modes.”

The Woodland Hills, CA, auction firm Cowan Alexander has scheduled an auction of Sequoia’s test and measurement equipment, computers, printers, flat-panel monitors, lab benches, and other equipment at the company’s headquarters. The auction, which begins at 11 a.m. PT Tuesday, is being webcast.

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Verizon Wireless announced today it has successfully tested its fourth-generation wireless network in Boston and Seattle, by making “data calls” involving streaming video, Web browsing, and file uploads and downloads from mobile devices. Verizon’s technology, called Long Term Evolution, is supposed to be much faster than existing 3G wireless networks, and competes with Clearwire’s WiMax system, which has already launched in four cities (including Portland, OR). Boston and Seattle will be the first cities to deploy Verizon’s 4G service.

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[Editors note: Revises and corrects the terms of QPrize convertible note funding]

When San Diego-based Qualcomm Ventures announced it was organizing a new international prize competition last May, the economy was already reeling and the venture capital industry had slammed on the brakes.

That slowdown in VC activity—especially for early stage startups—was probably the key factor in the company’s decision to set aside $550,000 in incentive funding for finalists in the “QPrize” competition, according to Nagraj Kashyap, who heads Qualcomm Ventures. With the Aug. 21 deadline for “QPrize” applications drawing near, Kashyap agreed to meet with me to discuss the business plan competition and the corporate venture arm, which usually maintains a relatively low profile here.

Nagraj Kashyap

Since Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker: QCOM]]) launched the venture arm nine years ago, it has provided funding for about 30 startups around the world, with investments typically ranging from $500,000 to $10 million, and from Series A to Series C rounds. Kashyap says the fund’s managers look for startups that provide both a strong potential for return on investment and that complement Qualcomm’s existing products and services. Its investments include lithium battery developer A123 Systems of Watertown, MA, video game console maker Zeebo of San Diego, and remote blood pressure monitor startup Triage Wireless in San Diego.

Kashyap says Qualcomm Ventures’ foray into organizing a business plan competition “all started when we saw this precipitous drop in venture funding, which hurts the early stage guys disproportionately.” An additional source of seed-stage funding won’t change the prospects for some startups, such as semiconductor design companies, because the capital costs are so high these days. But Kashyap says seed funding can make a big difference to …Next Page »

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In a press conference in New York this morning, Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop and Nokia’s executive vice president for devices Kai Öistämö announced that Redmond, WA-based Microsoft and Finland-based Nokia have formed an alliance that will create adaptations of Microsoft programs for Nokia’s smartphones.

Microsoft and Nokia will begin immediate development of Microsoft Office Mobile, a version of Office for use on Nokia’s Symbian devices. Other programs for productivity, communication and device-management will follow, and will be available for many types of Nokia smartphones. The deal extends beyond just development of the programs—the companies will jointly market the products they create together.

This is the second major recent alliance for Microsoft with a competitor, after making a major search and advertising deal with Yahoo just a couple of weeks ago. Similar to that deal, Nokia has been an important rival to Microsoft with its Symbian mobile OS competing with the Windows Mobile platform. This is the first time Office will be adapted for any mobile system besides Microsoft’s. And both deals help Microsoft compete with Google, whose free productivity applications have been chipping away at Microsoft’s Office dominance. Office is one of the most profitable products for Microsoft, so expanding the customer base seems like a good move for the company.

Nokia is the world’s largest producer of smartphones, but is facing intense competition from products like Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry. Putting Microsoft applications on its phones will help Nokia in “addressing the significant opportunity in mobile enterprise productivity,” according to Öistämö in the press release.

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Mentor Graphics, a Wilsonville, OR-based electronic design automation developer, announced today it has purchased Embedded Alley Solutions, based in San Jose, CA. Financial details were not released. Embedded Alley creates programs to develop software for mobile devices and has made systems for Linux and the Google Android. Mentor (NASDAQ: MENT) said it plans to augment its own Nucleus real-time operating system with Embedded Alley’s technology.

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NTT DoCoMo, the Japanese wireless communications provider, has invested $45.5 million to acquire a 35 percent stake in PacketVideo, the only operating company of San Diego digital media provider NextWave Wireless (NASDAQ: WAVE).

In a statement released last night, PacketVideo says the all-cash transaction is intended to strengthen DoCoMo’s position as a provider of music and video services in Japan. But the deal also provides a key infusion of cash for NextWave, which intends to use the net proceeds to pay down its debt and help with a corporate restructuring that NextWave announced last year, according to Neil Sharma, a PacketVideo spokesman and senior vice president.

Japan’s biggest wireless operator has been a key customer since 2003, when PacketVideo launched its video and audio media player software as part of DoCoMo’s 3G FOMA service. FOMA uses packet-based data transfer to support a broad variety of mobile software applications, including Internet access, e-mail, file transfers, remote log-in and Internet phone applications.

But Sharma tells me today a key element to the deal is that it is non-exclusive, meaning that PacketVideo is still free to supply its software to other wireless operators and mobile device makers. “DoCoMo has made it very clear that they want to strengthen their solutions in Japan,” Sharma says. But at the same time, they want to ensure stability in a company that is providing innovation to the entire industry. “This in effect allows PacketVideo to work more effectively,” Sharma says. “It’s almost a joint venture in a way.”

PacketVideo’s other customers include Verizon Wireless, T Mobile, Nokia, Motorola, Canada’s Rogers Telus, and France’s Orange. As of 2008, Packet Video estimates that its media software was embedded in more than 320 different mobile devices.

As Wade noted last September, NextWave has been dismantling or selling off its wireless semiconductor and network equipment businesses to focus on reselling the wireless spectrum it has licensed around the world and on PacketVideo, its sole remaining operating business. The company said in May that it lost $82.2 million on sales of $16.9 million in its first quarter ended March 28.

Sharma says PacketVideo’s all-in-one media software, called pvPlayer, was designed to play video and audio on mobile devices regardless of format. It is currently installed in more than 90 DoCoMo handset models. While PacketVideo is known primarily for its mobile media technologies, Sharma says the company also is capitalizing on the nascent “home connected market.” Its “TwonkyMedia” technology makes it possible for users to share video and audio clips on devices that share a home wireless connection.

The company has about 400 employees and contract workers in offices around the world.

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Seattle-based RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) announced today the first new version of its RealPlayer media software since May 2007. This beta version of RealPlayer SP lets you download video in any format and quickly put it on your mobile phone or portable media player—whether you have an iPhone, iPod, BlackBerry Storm, Palm Pre, or any of the latest devices. It also lets you share videos with friends on social websites like Facebook and Twitter. Both of these are new capabilities for Real. The software is now available for free download.

It’s a major release, and a big deal for the company. When most people think of RealNetworks, they think of media delivery software, multimedia formats, music, and gaming services (and also its recent dispute with Hollywood studios over digital rights management with its RealDVD product)—not necessarily mobile devices and social networks.

That could be changing. Although its push into mobile and social media is not new, today’s product launch seems to fit within Real’s strategic belief that mobile is increasingly central to how people enjoy digital entertainment. (The division that houses Real’s mobile business, Technology Products & Solutions, accounts for 34 percent of the company’s revenues, and that percentage has been growing.) The launch is also central to turning around Real’s media software and services business, which has been flat or declining in recent years.

The field of online video formatting and converting is crowded, of course. But what seems to separate Real’s software from the competition, at least initially, is how fast and easy it is to use. With just a couple of clicks, you can grab videos from YouTube, say, and put them on your phone automatically without worrying about what format they’re in and whether it matches your device’s settings. “This is a product for everyone,” says John Schussler, senior program manager at RealNetworks. “We make the experience really, really simple.”

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Seattle-based RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) announced today it has signed licensing agreements to power entertainment and digital media applications on netbooks and mobile devices. The digital entertainment giant has formed partnerships with operating system vendors including Canonical, Xandros, Phoenix, and DeviceVM, so now it targets both Windows and Linux-based devices. The move is being viewed as an effort by RealNetworks to gain traction in the open-source netbook market.

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