Apple

Update at 2:52 p.m. PDT, with a report from AdMob about global Internet traffic on smartphones.

With the popularity of Apple's iPhone mobile-application store growing and competitors Palm and Google teeing up their efforts, the number of smartphone users tapping into mobile-application stores are expected to reach 100 million in 2013, according to a research report released Tuesday by In-Stat.

(Credit: Apple)

Currently, the number of smartphone users accessing mobile-application stores is roughly a fourth of the projected 100 million users and is largely comprised of only iPhone users.

But with Google calling on third-party developers to embrace its Android smartphone and Palm with its highly anticipated Palm Pre smartphone set to debut this summer, In-Stat is expecting the number of users accessing mobile-application stores with their smartphones to increase four-fold by 2013, noted David Chamberlain, a principal analyst with In-Stat.

(Credit: Palm)

These smartphones are built on an open platform that can accept applications from any developer who writes programs for that particular mobile operating system and are sold, or distributed freely, via a mobile-application store, rather than through the phone's carrier.

By 2013, Chamberlain said he expects nearly one-third, or 100 million, of all smartphone users to have the capability to access mobile-application stores. The current slice of the total pie is a fraction of that and largely comprised of Apple iPhones, he noted.

(Credit: Google)

While a number of these mobile applications are offered for free, that could change as third-party developers and operators of mobile-application stores find it difficult to make money off advertising.

"If Coca-Cola buys a Superbowl ad, Nielsen can say how many people watched it," Chamberlain said. "But there are no independent third parties to audit mobile applications."

AdMob, a mobile-advertising marketplace, issued a report Tuesday that looked at February Internet traffic using smartphones.

According to the report, smartphones accounted for 33 percent of the global Internet traffic in February, up from a 26 percent slice six months ago.

And within the smartphone market, here's a ranking of which device grabbed the largest share of Internet traffic, according to AdMob:

(Credit: AdMob)

And in the U.S., Apple's iPhone has an even greater share of the Internet traffic among smartphones.

The iPhone holds a 49.5 percent slice of U.S. Internet smartphone traffic, followed by Research in Motion's Blackberry 8300 with a 9.1 percent slice and the Blackberry 8100 with a 6.9 percent piece.

And among mobile operating systems in the U.S., AdMob ranks Google's Android as holding a 5 percent slice for the smartphone market. And holding the U.S. lead is the iPhone operating system with 50 percent of the market share in February.

Google's Android may get all the attention, but there's more than one industry consortium working to unify Linux development for mobile phones.

The nonprofit LiMo Foundation plans to announce the launch of LiMo Platform Release 1 at the CTIA show in Las Vegas Monday. Release 1 gives handset makers and carriers the basic operating system software needed to run a phone, leaving it up to them to put a crowd-pleasing user inferface and applications on top of that phone software.

"This is a significant achievement for LiMo in that we now have a complete fully released version of the platform that our members are free to distribute," said Andrew Shikiar, director of global marketing for the LiMo Foundation. More than 30 mobile-phone companies are members of LiMo, including heavyweights Samsung, Motorola, Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo, and newest member Texas Instruments.

There's no shortage of interest among the mobile-phone industry elite in using Linux on their phones. Linux provides a compelling alternative for the mobile world to commercial operating systems like Symbian or Windows Mobile since it's cheaper and not controlled by a huge company (Nokia and Microsoft, respectively). Also, its modular nature allows handset makers and carriers to put together an implementation that makes the most sense for their customers or geography.

However, that's also part of the problem with mobile Linux. All those different implementations of Linux force application developers to tweak their programs for each different implementation; that's a ton of work. The resulting fragmentation has limited Linux to lower-end mobile phones, with the higher-end smartphone development community largely organized around Symbian, Windows Mobile, Research In Motion's BlackBerry, and Apple's growing iPhone business.

Hence the LiMo foundation's goal, which is to produce a common platform that various members can use to run mobile phones, and ensure application compatibility across different devices. Unfortunately, Release 1 falls short of that goal.

Broader application portability will be accomplished with Release 2, expected out in early 2009, Shikiar said. The second release will also improve the multimedia capabilities of the operating system. By then, however, the Google Effect will have made its first impact on the mobile phone market.

Android, and the Open Handset Alliance created by Google last year, have very much the same goal as LiMo: to unify Linux development for mobile phones. Google boasts a roster of many of the same companies that founded the LiMo foundation just months before Android made its debut, perhaps a hint those companies have now set their sights elsewhere for Linux mobile-phone software.

The first phones to use Android are expected to arrive this summer or fall, just a few months after the first Release Candidate 1 phones arrive. Shikiar said LiMo doesn't see itself as a competitor to Android per se, but it's hard to see how the two organizations aren't jockeying for space inside the same phones.

Phones with Release 1, however, are already in the market, such as Motorola's Razr 2 and Rokr E8. Others are expected to be released later this year, Shikiar said.

Having floated a spinoff trial balloon for its struggling mobile phone business, has Motorola reconsidered?

Motorola sent a ripple through the mobile phone industry a few weeks ago when it released a statement saying it was "exploring the structural and strategic realignment of its businesses" that "may include the separation of Mobile Devices from its other businesses." The company has lost significant market share in the mobile phone business after failing to come up with an Act 2 following the success of the Razr.

Motorola CEO Greg Brown

(Credit: Motorola)

But in Barcelona on Monday for the World Mobile Congress, new Motorola CEO Greg Brown told Reuters that the company is "fully committed" to its mobile device business. "I don't want there to be any confusion," he said, as he caused confusion.

At first glance, it sounds like Brown has made his peace with keeping the mobile phone business in-house, despite the demands of investor Carl Icahn that Motorola separate phones from the rest of its activities. "Motorola is fully committed to the mobile devices business and I am fully committed to mobile devices," he told Reuters.

But an analyst interviewed by Reuters noted that Motorola would have to be committed to the business in order to sell it. Most executives aren't going to just casually mention on-the-record to a reporter at a cocktail party, "Yeah, I'm looking to unload this thing the first chance I get. Do you know anybody?"

It's hard to imagine why Motorola would dump the mobile phone business because, despite its struggles, it still has pretty good brand recognition. And given the speed at which the phone industry moves, the company could be back firing on all cylinders just as quickly as its downfall led to the departure of former CEO Ed Zander.

But spinning off the unit could give investors a nice return from both the spinoff itself and the remaining company, which would be profitable. Few consumers realize that Motorola makes a host of wireless gear for businesses, as well as set-top boxes, but investors are familiar with those businesses.

Google is ready to unveil a suite of software for mobile phones based on open-source technology, backed by some of the largest wireless industry companies in the world.

The company is expected to hold a press conference on Monday to unveil the project, which is expected to incorporate software from the Linux world into a mobile platform code-named Android that's designed to run on phones, according to sources familiar with Google's plans. A software development kit for what's being called "a complete mobile-phone software stack" is believed to be in the works and will be released relatively soon thereafter, the sources said. It's not exactly clear what kind of software will come as part of that stack, but it's said to include everything you need to run a phone.

Japanese wireless carriers KDDI and NTT DoCoMo are said to be heavily involved in what will be called the Open Handset Alliance, according to other sources. The rest of the more than 30 other companies involved reads like a who's-who list of the mobile-computing industry, including Qualcomm, Broadcom, HTC, Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Sprint, and Texas Instruments.

Don't expect to see a Google phone, or Gphone, on store shelves anytime soon. And in such a large project with so many different players, plans and some details could still change over the weekend. It's unclear when the final version will be released. Google has repeatedly declined to talk about the Gphone or confirm the Monday event.

Persistent rumors of Google's interest in the mobile-phone market have captivated Silicon Valley and the wireless industry for months. The company's interest appears to be simple: there are more than a billion mobile phones in the world, and sales show no signs of slowing down.

Over time, these mobile phones are going to become more and more sophisticated, and the race to develop a truly mobile computer is wide open. Google has the engineering talent to make a concerted push into this area while keeping rivals like Microsoft at bay, and it has enough resources to force the industry to take it seriously, despite its relative lack of experience in the market.

Mobile phones are just starting to move beyond the stripped-down mobile Internet and join the party with their bigger PC cousins. When they get there, they'll need search, and they'll need applications tailored to mobile phones. Those are things Google figured out how to do a long time ago.

And when you've got practically unlimited amounts of money, finding the things you don't have is somewhat easier. Android was the name of a mobile-phone software company acquired by Google in 2005 and led by Andy Rubin, the co-founder of Danger. It was never entirely clear what Android was working on, but it appears to be coming to fruition.

The open-source community appears to be contributing a lot of technology to Android. Google is expected to license Android under the Apache License, Version 2.0, according to sources.

Wind River Systems, a company that specializes in tailoring Linux for embedded devices such as network equipment and mobile phones, is likely to be a key part of the alliance, sources familiar with the effort said. The company is expected to play a role in working on a Linux foundation for Google, integrating it with specific hardware, and providing support to phone companies using the software.

A Wind River representative declined to comment Friday on any Google partnership.

Wind River previously was fond mostly of its own operating system, VxWorks, but it got Linux religion in 2003, and Linux has been a top priority for Chief Executive Ken Klein.

But Linux in mobile phones has been a tough proposition for multicompany consortia over the years. Among those that have tackled the challenge are the Linux Phone Standard (Lips) Forum, the Open Source Developer Labs, the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), and most recently, the LiMo Foundation founded in 2006.

The Google group is separate from LiMo, but the two share many members, and a connection could be beneficial. Linux-based phone software for Google could dovetail with LiMo's work, providing mobile phone software developers with a unified software foundation.

Mobile phones can't run just any software. Battery life is paramount, and therefore software must be designed to run inside a constrained environment with limited amounts of memory and processing power at its disposal. Linux appeals to phone makers because it's modular, meaning that it's relatively easy to piece together only the technology you need, and its relatively cheap to acquire the parts.

Also, phones are complicated, at least as they compare to PCs. ARM's chip designs are at the heart of almost every mobile phone in the world, but those cores get implemented in very different ways by partners such as Samsung and Texas Instruments, and ensuring application compatibility across multiple phones is a difficult undertaking.

The key to Google's software, however, will be how it's accepted by the public. People are drawn to sleek hardware, but they spend the majority of their time working with software. That's where an attachment is formed with a computer, and that attachment is particularly strong with a device you would carry with you everywhere you go. No details were immediately available as to the look and feel of the software.

Word of the pending Google news had reached JumpTap, a competitor to Google in the mobile ads space that is not included in the announcement.

"I'm not sure if it's an industry-supported event or a Google trap" to get developers to write to Google software, said Dan Olschwang, chief executive of JumpTap. "If it is really open source and the mobile-phone manufacturers will adopt it, it will be a major industry-changing event."

Google isn't just looking to expand its ad monetization technology to new platforms, but also to shake up the telecommunications industry and its "walled garden" approach that limits what handsets, carriers, and services consumers can use, industry experts said.

"Google's stated open-source approach, or open net approach to life, is antithetical to the way cellular carriers look at the world," said Tim Hanlon, an executive vice president at Denuo, a consulting arm of advertising agency Publicis Groupe. Carriers are "loath to separate device from service. They're loath to let third-party applications play on their proprietary network."

If Google succeeds in opening up the industry it will be the biggest thing the search company has done in the last couple of years, said Stephen Arnold, author of The Google Legacy and a new book, Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator. "The phone companies "don't understand the business Google is in, and now they're talking to them!"

And the company could very well have a trump card to play, if it follows through on its interest in the 700MHz spectrum auction scheduled for January 2008.

Can Google really be a mobile-software developer, search engine, application house, and wireless carrier? And will people actually want to use that? We might soon find out.

News.com's Stephen Shankland and Elinor Mills contributed to this report.

Apparently putting your iPhone in airplane mode is not the digital equivalent of returning your seatback to the upright position.

Don't try to watch movies on an iPhone if you're flying on ATA.

(Credit: ATA Airlines)

A flight attendant for ATA Airlines recently asked a flier watching a movie midflight on the way to Hawaii to shut off his iPhone, not for the perfectly reasonable reason that the man was watching the inane Jennifer-Love Hewitt vehicle I Know What You Did Last Summer, but because you're not allowed to use cell phones inflight. Casey, the iPhone user, told Consumerist that he tried several times to explain to the flight attendant that the iPhone was in "airplane mode," with all the radios disabled. But the flight attendants did not accept that explanation, and continued to insist that FAA regulations prohibit talking on cell phones when the cabin door is closed, despite the fact that Casey wasn't actually talking and the fact they were over the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

As happens with these things, people got huffy, tempers flared, and Casey eventually found himself talking to a few bemused policemen in Hawaii. He reported that the flight attendant changed his story several times, first telling police that the airplane wasn't shielded for any type of electronic device (although apparently everybody else's MP3 players were fine), then telling police the plane wasn't shielded for "ONLY (emphasis his) phones in airplane mode." Casey was allowed to go, and apparently was not sentenced to watch Heartbreakers in its entirety to get a better sense of what might have provoked the flight attendant.

I'm sure there's more to this story. I'm playing a game of phone tag with ATA, and decided to post and update later if I hear back from them. It also brings up a few interesting points.

First of all, "airplane mode" doesn't appear to be a universally defined state of being by the FCC, FAA, the airlines or the mobile phone industry, and perhaps it should. Apple's Web page on the iPhone's airplane mode clearly states, "If you turn on airplane mode, the wireless features of iPhone are disabled, and if allowed by the aircraft operator and applicable laws and regulations (emphasis mine), you can continue to use the non-wireless features after takeoff.

Some airlines explicitly state that you can use a mobile phone in airplane mode over 10,000 feet. Others don't get into it, and just say you can't use mobile phones while in the air. So it might very well be ATA's policy to prohibit the use of mobile phones under any circumstances, just like it's their policy to shoehorn passengers into seats best suited for those under 5 feet tall.

I also wonder if smartphones will eventually force the FAA to make a decision about the use of mobile phones during flights. There may be legitimate reasons to disable wireless networking or calling on airplanes, whether those are technical concerns both in the air and on the ground, or whether it's merely a nod to flyers who don't want to hear one end of a five-hour conversation. But there's an awful lot of things you can do with mobile computers that don't involve wireless networking, from listening to music or watching movies to playing games or even composing documents with an expandable keyboard. As long as people are allowed to use their iPods, laptops, and portable DVD players above 10,000 feet, it seems silly to prohibit the use of a properly silenced smartphone just because it also happens to be a phone.

But we're talking about airlines and the government, so silly things happen all the time. Some consistency on mobile phone usage would be nice from the airline industry, but I'd prefer they figure out an whole new operating model that actually works before taking on matters such as these.

A new report surfaced Tuesday that Google's hell-bent on making its own mobile phone operating system, adding to the rumors that a prototype could be released soon.

Engadget is reporting that we could hear official news from Google about its plans for a handset-optimized operating system in September. The newest report falls into the more likely category--at least in my opinion--that Google would be working with existing phone companies on a device that uses a Google-developed operating system and suite of mobile applications, not building its own hardware.

The appeal for Google is simple: mobile phone growth is exploding, and it's the future of computing. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's almost like the early days of the PC industry when Microsoft hadn't yet come to dominate the industry and there were several different ideas for software to run those new-fangled PCs.

Google's OS is supposedly based on Linux, and designed to work well with its existing applications. If the rumors are true, Google will find itself in new ground competing against Microsoft, Palm, Symbian and its good buddy Apple.