There’s been a rapid increase in the netbook market over the past 12 months that has been hard to miss. Ultra-portable laptops that carry relatively large capabilities in a smaller package – perfect for travelling, remote or mobile business, kids, etc. All the major players have gotten into the space and made it very crowded, very quickly. Then you have new players like Nokia with their 3G Booklet, who are coming from a mobility-focus and bringing some innovation while staying fairly much in the mainstream (HDMI, 3G … but running Windows 7).
Then you have start-ups like the Boston-based “litl“. litl have gone about to redfine the “netbook” into an “web-book”; stripping away much of the normal “computer”astheics and features though, and bringing web-based content closer to the user (something that reminds me of the One Laptop Per Child program). The device stores all of its data in the cloud, and has multiple viewing modes that improve the experience depending on what kind of content you are browsing. Read More
Bill Perry has uploaded his slide deck from the presentation he recently gave at Nokia World 09 – “Prospering with Ovi Store”. Bill is focusing a lot more on Ovi Store for developers these days, so if you have questions feel free to ping him on his blog or catch up with him at the Nokia booth at Adobe MAX next week.
Over at sgentrepreneurs.com there’s a short interview with Rick Treweek, co-founder at Breakdesign, on their recent Flash mobile work and plans. Rick, Stefan, and the rest of the BD crew have been working with Flash Lite for a very long time now, and have had great success with Dawn of the Fly, the Johnnie Walker Digital PA, and with securing funding through the Open Screen Fund for their upcoming Barking Seed game platform. It’s always great to see business and industry publications giving time to start-up companies in this space – well done Rick.
Check out the interview here, and also BD’s latest product – That Roach Game.
I’m very happy to announce that Moket has secured funding from the Open Screen Fund, to further development of one of our mobile games in the works, currently titled “Pocket Mogul”. The game will be using several of Nokia’s S60 Platform Services for Flash Lite, and will be initially designed for s60 5th Edition touch-screen devices (screenshot for demo only – not the final game) before being ported to any supported key-based and other devices.
I’ll be releasing some more details on the game itself in the coming weeks, particularly once my Adobe MAX commitments are wrapped up, but at this stage I’d like to thank Nokia and Adobe for coming on board with the project. I’m looking forward to being able to bring to market something a little different for Flash Lite games, and it’s always great to be supported during the creation of original IP. Stay tuned!
Just received some market data analysis from Canalys this morning, regarding the smartphone market in Q2 2009.
Smart phones continue to shine as one of the brightest spots of the technology industry, with shipments growing despite the global recession. Innovation in interfaces, design, applications and promotion continue to excite consumers, which, in contrast to the PC industry, is helping to keep average selling prices stable. The rise in data traffic seen by mobile network operators is finally generating a return on their investment in broadband capacity and will drive further infrastructure expenditure.
It’s interesting to note the comment about network operators finally generating a return on investment from mobile data. This was a point that I raised in many meetings and presentations about 5 years ago when talking about why Flash and other rich, data-centric applications would be an important piece of the revenue puzzle for operators. Seems as though it’s taken a little longer than expected, and of course some monumental shifts in consumer education through the introduction of game-changers such as the iPhone. Read More
