The G2 is T-mobile’s follow up to the first commercial Android device, the G1. In the two years since the release of the G1, cellphones have changes radically, and the differences between the G1 and G2 are a great example of the advancements. The G2 takes advantage of T-mobile’s HSPA+ network, which allows for download speeds in excess of 20Mbps (faster than most home internet connections), and has a “stock” version of Android. A “stock” version of Android allows the Android operating system to be upgraded faster, which I have found to be a major benefit of the Nexus One that I’ve been using. I consistently get Android operating system updates 2-3 months before anyone else. The bottom line, if you’re looking for a clean Android experience and can’t get your hand on a Nexus One, the G2 is the next best thing.

Nokia also began shipping its N8 smartphone last week. While still the leader in both overall and smartphone shipments, Nokia has become all but forgotten due to all the iPhone and Android hype. It’s quite an unfortunate situation as Nokia still makes great hardware, and the N8 is no exception. However, since Nokia does not have a strong relationship with any of the major US carriers, no one has launched a major marketing initiative around the device. Unless Nokia really steps up both their marketing effort and carrier relationship status in the US, I would suspect that Nokia will continue to fade away into a niche player in the US market, which is a shame based on the quality of their hardware. If you’re seriously interested in picking up the device, your best bet is going to be to shell out the cash and buy the N8 directly from Nokia.

While I am not a huge tablet fan, BlackBerry maker RIM announced their tablet called the PlayBook last week. My first reaction was that RIM is making a huge mistake, until RIM co-CEO Mike Lazardis spoke about it. RIM is positioning the PlayBook as a companion to their smartphones targeted directly at business users. I think BlackBerry may be onto something. Businesses may be hesitant to buy employees iPads due to the level of distraction from games and apps that are available. With the PlayBook, enterprises will be given more control and the majority of applications will be business oriented. I suspect that businesses will be more receptive to buying their employees PlayBooks, which could overflow into consumer sales, much like their BlackBerry smartphone platform. In essence, I like the strategy, now it is up to RIM to execute.

In other handset news, another interesting device released last week was the R2-D2 themed Droid 2 from Motorola. Themed cellphones is an untapped market in my opinion. People are always looking for a way to stand out from the crowd, and themed cellphones are a great way to achieve it. I’m very curious to see how well these R2-D2 themed units sell. If they sell as well as I think they should, I suspect that you will see a lot more themed cellphones making their way into the market.

Finally, if you are interested in what the future holds for mobile phones, then take a look at this Mozilla video for a concept phone called “Seabird – A Community-driven Concept Phone.” Mozilla does not have any intention to build the phone, but it is clearly a sign of what is possible and what could be coming to mobile phones in the near future. I particularly like the idea of the included Bluetooth headset/mouse as well as the projectors that allow you to turn any surface into an interactive screen. I suspect that you will see phones within the next 2 or3 years with this type of technology, and I can’t wait!

In other comments at the conference, Verizon inidcated that tiered pricing for mobile data usage is coming within the next six months. With Sprint CEO Dan Hesse hinting at the same thing for his network, I am fearful that carrier greed could become the biggest impediment to mobile broadband adoption. I understand that the carriers need to make money, and that networks cost money to build, but if consumers start getting charged by the bit to download emails, access the web and watch streaming content, I suspect that mobile broadband adoption will slow – considerably. Lets face it, the internet as we know it today didn’t really take off until flat rate broadband pricing to the home was introduced. If the carriers begin metering users, many of the most innovative services that are being developed for mobile, like streaming content, will suffer and could die, killing innovation. In other words, the biggest impediment to carriers signing up more mobile broadband customers are most likely the carriers themselves.

Finally, I want to wrap up this week with another fun video featuring Dot, “the world’s smallest stop-motion animation character.” At first glance, this would appear off-topic on a blog focused on mobile, except for the fact that it was shot using a Nokia N8 cellphone equipped with a microscope attachment. I can still remember the days when my Dad had to carry around not only a TV studio-sized camera but also the entire VCR unit itself to shoot home movies. Now they can be shot on a device that not only produces better home movies than that old video camera but also takes pictures, plays music and lets you talk to anyone in the world at anytime. Truly amazing when you consider the progression of technology over the last 30 years!

In other handset news, Nokia and BlackBerry maker RIM, two manufacturers that are falling out of favor with investors, made major announcements last week. At their self-hosted Nokia World Show, Nokia touted that they are still the industry leader with 260,000 smartphone activations a day (compared to Android’s 200,000 and iOS’ 80,000). Unfortunately, perception is reality, and while Nokia still has the lead, they are suffering from a perception problem that John Biggs at MobileCrunch so eloquently describes. Along those same lines, RIM announced earnings last week. While the results blew past analyst expectations and a bright future was painted by management, the reality remains that Android continues to rapidly close the gap on RIM’s dominance in North America according to the latest ComScore stats. Both RIM and Nokia had better not be content to rest on their laurels because as they say in the mutual fund world – “past performance is not an indication of future performance.” I’m not surprised that Nokia and RIM are doing well when you look at past and current stats. When you look at trends, though, both Nokia and RIM should be concerned, and I mean very concerned.

As usual, I wanted to wrap up this week on a fun note. Motorola is launching a Star Wars themed R2-D2 Droid handset later this year on Verizon. While the hardware and wallpapers for the device look cool, they are not nearly as cool as this prototype Star Trek Communicator themed Nokia device. It’s quite a shame that only 14 were made back in 2008. I’m not even a Star Trek fan, and I found this concept prototype just too cool. Definitely worth spending the 9 minutes to watch the video.

Kicking things off, rumors about the iPhone becoming available outside of AT&T continue to grow, which given the results of a JD Power and Associates study highlighting AT&T’s poor network performance, can’t happen soon enough for many people. The chic rumor is that the iPhone is coming to Verizon given Apple’s orders for CDMA chipsets. While this is what most people want, another possibility raised last week is that Apple is creating a “world-phone” iPhone. In other words, one device that is compatible with mobile networks around the world. I think this a better possibility than a Verizon iPhone. A “world-phone” iPhone could also lead to the phone landing on T-mobile, which is another rumor that is gaining momentum. Of course, Apple’s lips are sealed, so I don’t suspect that we will know anything until the day after it happens, at best!

Speaking of AT&T, executives at the company have implied that the new BlackBerry Torch sales are not meeting expectations. Not a good sign for BlackBerry, who is continuing to struggle against the rising tide of Android devices. It is also rumored that many of BlackBerry’s best customers, like financial institutions, are starting to experiment with iPhone and Android devices. As I mentioned before, BlackBerry would be best served to keep their “bread-and-butter” enterprise customers happy and forget about competing in the consumer market.

In Android news, T-mobile announced the G2 device – the follow-on to the G1 who many consider “the original” Android device. The device looks great on paper, but the best part could be that it will run a stock Android build. In other words, no carrier crapware or special UI’s like Sense, TouchWiz or MotoBlur. If my NexusOne is any indication, this means that it will be one of the first devices to get new Android builds, which I’ve found to be one of the best, if not the best, feature of the NexusOne.

Another hot rumor last week is that Microsoft will launch Windows Phone 7 October 11 in a flashy New York City event. Microsoft has committed over $500MM to the launch of their latest mobile OS, so I would expect this event to be quite the party. Unfortunately, I don’t think that I’ll be on the invite list, but I’m willing to tag along as someone’s guest if you need company for the week….

Finally, Nokia is preparing to launch the Nokia N8, their latest attempt to head off the iPhone and Android juggernaut. In order to build buzz for the device, they released a rather racy, but not over the top, interactive video featuring a self-described “sizzling hot” model. Is Nokia worried that the N8 cannot stand on its own, or is this a genius move by Nokia to create buzz about the device? I’ve embedded the video below, and I’ll let you be the judge.

Both companies really should be more concerned about potential new competitors. One such company is Huawei, the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in China. Huawei is releasing smartphones into the US market and is working on some very interesting concept phones (see video below from Andoid and Me). I have experienced working with Huawei firsthand in a previous career, and they are very aggressive when entering a market and determined to win, at any cost. With Huawei entering the market, all the current major players – Nokia, Apple, HTC, Samsung and Motorola – need to pay close attention to Huawei’s next move. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them get very aggressive here in the US and Europe with their smartphone offerings, particularly on price. Make note of the name . Huawei’s first smartphones should show up on T-mobile later this year.

Finally, for those who like green initiatives, one innovative person came up with a new way to charge a cell phone – by hamster! I’ve seen phones that use solar to charge, or movement, but this is the first time I’ve seen a phone charged by hamster. Who knows if it’s real or not, but it sure makes for an entertaining video.

One company that is seeing declines in market share is RIM with their BlackBerry platform. BlackBerry has been the dominant smartphone in the US for what seems like forever. However, unless you are addicted to email or are a business user, BlackBerry’s hardware and overall user experience lags behind the iPhone and Android. As BlackBerry users are coming off contract, it’s obvious they are switching platforms. BlackBerry attempted to stem their losses with last week’s launch of the BlackBerry Torch 9800. While it closed the gap on features, it still does not put it on the same level as the iPhone or Android. At this point, RIM needs to stay focused on its bread and butter, the enterprise. As I pointed out in an article last week, RIM cannot serve both enterprise users and consumers with the same platform. They have a dominant position in the enterprise that they need to protect. So while the consumer market is where all the media attention is, RIM needs to stay focused on who’s paying their bills.

In the end, I see Android winning the market share game by dominating the middle and low end of the smartphone market, Apple winning the high end of the market, which is the most profitable, and RIM winning the enterprise. Left on the outside looking in are Nokia, Microsoft and HP. I’m not so sure that any of these three can carve out a piece of the market as I don’t think the smartphone is big enough, at least today, to support more than three strong companies.

With the hot summer handset releases behind us, who is the worldwide leader in the market? According to Strategy Analytics, Nokia (remember them?) sold the greatest share of the 308M handsets sold in Q2. Nokia’s share was 36.1%, follwed by Samsung at 20.7%, and LG at 10%. RIM, the only dedicated smartphone maker in the top 5, came in fourth at 3.6%. So while smartphones grab all of the media attention, the low-end of the market accounts for all the volume. If the market is largest at the low end, then why are all the manufacturers chasing the smartphone market? Because that’s where all the profits are. For example, Apple is nowhere to be seen on the market share list, yet they are far and away the most profitable mobile phone company.

Speaking of market share, a report on mobile search was released by StatCounter last week. At the top of the heap was Google, with a whopping 98.29% share of the market. I’m not sure how accurate the numbers are, but even if they are off by 20%, that’s still a dominant share of the market. If that doesn’t convince you that you should have a mobile presence that Google can index, then you’re losing lots of business to your competitors who do have one - without even knowing about it! Both Yahoo! and Bing, the two other big mobile search providers, account for just 1.25% of the market. On the bright side, I guess Yahoo! and Bing’s share can only get bigger, because it certainly can’t get any smaller!

Finally, just to kick start everyone’s favorite rumor mill, I am going to jump on the bandwagon and say that AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity may be coming to an end this year. Why? Well, AT&T made a statement that they are going to be the premier vendor for Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7. I don’t understand why AT&T would back a competitor to the iPhone unless their exclusivity is coming to an end. It’s time to place your bets. I say that the iPhone is available on another carrier for the holidays, and I’ll predict T-mobile over Verizon since T-mobile’s GSM technology is the most compatible with AT&T and Apple, out of spite, wants to stick it to Verizon for their Android promoting, iPhone-bashing ads. What do you think? Feel free to sound off in the comments!

The history of .mobi
Just as .gov indicates government sites, .edu indicates educational institutions, and .mil indicated military sites, .mobi was created to indicate sites that were optimized for viewing on mobile phones. The .mobi domain was approved as a top level domain in July, 2005, by ICANN, the official overseer and approver of top level domain names. Its inception was financed and backed by a number of major companies, including Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodafone, T-mobile and others. Registration of domain names using .mobi became available in September, 2006.

According to dotMobi, close to one million sites have been registered using the .mobi top level domain since its inception, but the .mobi domain has never really taken off amongst consumers. Most of the problem is timing related, as very few mobile consumers were accessing the web using their mobile devices in 2006. All of that changed with the release of the iPhone in 2007. The iPhone and subsequent smartphone platforms made the web usable on mobile devices. People bypassed .mobi sites because they were either not aware of a .mobi domain or not happy with the reduced functionality of the .mobi sites, which were built for the most basic mobile devices and did not take advantage of the improved functionality and touchscreen capabilities of the latest devices. 

The issues with .mobi
Using .mobi is not free and comes with many issues that you need to be aware of before jumping in.

1. Increased Cost
Costs for .mobi domains are usually more than 2x the cost of regular domains. A regular domain registration usually runs less than $10/mo. whereas a .mobi domain can run $20/mo. or more. Plus, while a standard domain can service both desktop and mobile clients, a .mobi domain exists only to serve mobile devices resulting in additional domain registration costs.

2. Maintenance Overhead
Since the .mobi domain is an additional domain on top of your regular site, you need to invest additional resources to maintain the content and site.

3. Lack of Awareness
The general public is not aware of the existence of the .mobi domain. In order to get the most out of a .mobi site, you need to spend additional resources and money marketing and promoting it.

4. Poor Functionality
.mobi sites need to be designed for the most basic web-enabled phones resulting in a sub-optimal experience for smartphone users. Since smartphone users are the overwhelming majority of mobile web traffic, your .mobi site ends up service an extremely small, if not non-existent, segment of the market.

A .mobi domain is unecessary
Given the tremendous advances in mobile over the last five years, there is no reason to secure a .mobi domain. When creating an on-line presence and mobile website, you are best advised to use a “OneURL” strategy. A OneURL strategy is easily implemented using device detection code on your existing web presence and allows you to simplify your marketing by promoting one domain for desktop and mobile and by saving money through reduced maintenance and domain registration costs.

So when considering your mobile presence, don’t  use a .mobi domain – you don’t need it. If you already have a .mobi domain, drop it and start using your existing url and device detection code to service mobile visitors.

By the way. if you’re considering mobile or have an existing .mobi site and would like help or advice on your mobile presence, feel free to contact us. We’d be more than happy to help.

Now, not being a lawyer, I have no idea if Apple has a case or not. In fact, I am not even sure why Apple is filing the lawsuit. Apple has been wildly successful lately, generating tons of profits, gaining marketshare, and waging a patent fight against a large entity like Google is sure to end in a stalemate. I can only figure that Apple is trying to achieve one of the following:

• Apple needs to show they are enforcing their patents to make their Nokia case stick. Earlier this year, Nokia went after Apple, claiming patent infringement. Of course, Apple retaliated and sued Nokia for patent violation. Nokia has a history of defending and licensing their patents. Apple – not so much. Apple’s legal team may need to establish patent defense in order to win their Nokia case.
• Apple wants access to HTC or Google patents. I would suspect that Apple would be more interested in Google ad patents, especially their recently granted patent on location-based advertising. Perhaps Apple is concerned that Google would try to block their advertising intentions and want to head any suit off before it gets started by establishing a cross-licensing arrangement.
• Apple is defending market share. Even though Apple is gaining market share, Android is grwoing much faster (albeit from a smaller base). Apple could feel threatened by Android, although I don’t perceive Apple as being that paranoid – they haven’t been in the past.
• Apple is getting greedy. Perhaps Apple wants to eliminatelimit competition by handicapping key features in the competition’s handsets. The problem with this strategy is that there are so many patents flying around that the iPhone is inevitably infringing on patents held by either HTC, Google, or others. Patent lawsuits between big companies almost always end up in cross-licensing agreements.

I haven’t been able to wade through my reader far enough to see Google’s response to all of this, but I’m willing to bet big dollars that HTC or Google will file a countersuit listing all of the patents that Apple violates, either with the iPhone or other products. In the end, a cross-licensing agreement will be reached and no one loses, except, of course, us.

Yes, the big loser in the mobile patent war between Nokia, Apple, HTC and Google will be you and me, the mobile consumer. Filing, executing, and defending patents costs money, a lot of money. The work required to investigate and license patents slows innovation and delays the arrival of new features and innovative handsets. The costs of patents is passed on to us through higher costs for handsets. In effect, patents have become a tax that businesses assess the consumer.

It’s unfortunate that the manufacturers in the mobile market are resorting to patent lawsuits to slow each other down, raise costs and hinder innovation. I hope that these companies, who are supposed to be servicing us their customers, not fleecing them, come quickly to their senses, reach an amicable agreement, and continue to compete in the marketplace where we, the consumers, determine the winners and losers, and not in the courtroom where judges determine the winners and losers by the letter of the law, not by the rules of the marketplace.

Last week’s mobile news was a little sparse but that was expected following the flurry of activity around the Mobile World Conference. One of the more interesting stories was about mobile at the Olympics. Yahoo said they saw huge spikes in mobile searches related to every aspect of the Olympics. This doesn’t surprise me. The mobile web is fast becoming an integral part of our daily lives and with quick accessibility to info and news anytime, anywhere. What did surprise me are some of the key stats for searches on Yahoo last week:

• Searches “ice skating rinks” were up 607%
• Searches for “red Olympic mittens” were up 182% (um, there were searches for this before the Olympics?)
• Searches for Lindsey Vonn were up 1,446%
• Searches for “Shaun White snowboarding” were up 1,921%

Yahoo also built a specific mobilesite for the games sharing info, announcements, and results. This is truly the future of sporting events as the mobile web allows attendees to enhance their in-venue experience and for non-attendees to follow along. Well done Yahoo!

The other big story this week that caught my attention was Gartner’s latest worldwide smartphone sales and marketshare numbers. Overall, smartphone shipments were up 24% from the year before. The iPhone doubled its smartphone marketshare to 14% taking most of their growth away from Symbian (which is used by Nokia and I’ve discussed their slide in previous posts). BlackBerry ended up with 20% marketshare which represents a growth of 3%. So, for all of you who keep telling me that the iPhone is stealing marketshare from BlackBerry, it’s just not true. The iPhone is gaining ground but at Nokia’s expense, not BlackBerry.

As always, here are the latest handset rumors, announcements and reviews I found this week:

• HTC Supersonic (or Incredible) spotted on video?
• Motorola Backflip for AT&T unboxing and hands-on
• Motorola Cliq XT with T-Mobile branding caught in the wild
• Snapdragon powered LG LU9400 Arena Max touchscreen phone lands on LG Telecom as Maxx
• Review: Motorola Devour
• LG hopes to launch their first Windows Phone 7 handset around September or November
• Nokia E72 smartphone review – all business
• HTC Incredible sneaks into Verizon’s inventory system
• Windows Phone 7 devices will come in three flavors
• HTC Desire headed for AT&T, Sprint picks up Legend (as Hero2)?
• Checking out Acer’s low-cost beTouch e110 Android smartphone
• Acer Liquid e comes to North America by way of Rogers Wireless
• LG GD510 Pop touchscreen feature phone surpasses one million sales, new colors coming soon
• Nexus One for Verizon takes one big step closer to reality, clears the FCC

To finish off this week’s update, here are a few other articles I want to share with you:

• RIM’s free BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express is available now
• Survey: 26% of Americans Get News via Phone
• T-Mobile USA reports Q4 2009 subscriber growth, but lower earnings
• Sprint to launch 4G network in at least 8 major markets this year
• Mobile phone subscriptions expected to exceed 5 billion in 2010, global mobile prices falling
• Microsoft updates Marketplace – smartphone apps can now install to memory cards
• MWC Attendance Reaches 49,000
• Opera Software Posts 87% Slump in Q4 Profits

See or hear anything else interesting in mobile.  Let us know by leaving a comment below.