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Verizon Wireless ( NYSE: VZ ) has quietly released Dashboard , a new storefront found on its phones using Adobe's ( NSDQ: ADBE ) Flash technology, mocoNews has learned. So far, Dashboard has launched on the LG Chocolate 3, and more phones are expected by the end of the year, making it one of the largest mobile implementations of Flash in the U.S., both Verizon Wireless and Adobe confirmed. Todd Murphy, Verizon Wireless's director of digital media programming, explained to us the platform stands alongside the carrier's Get It Now platform, and is designed to be an easy place for consumers to find both content from Verizon's deck, but also links that take you to the mobile Web, "It's a dynamic real-time store. It's one click up on the Chocolate 3. We have a system on the back end that allows you to merchandise and change things every couple of hours." The launch of Dashboard comes just before Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen keynoted at CTIA , where he pleaded for more standards in the industry, so that content can be developed once and published across many mobile devices and also the Internet and TV. However, operators in the U.S. have been slow to adopt Flash, even though it's embedded in a lot of handsets. Lack of Flash is a constant complaint about the iPhone. Verizon has been one of the more aggressive companies on that front, providing a Flash Lite extension to its Brew platform, which features content from game companies, such as Smashing Ideas and Mobitween, but also videos from MTV's Atom Entertainment. Anup Murarka, Adobe's director for technical marketing, who also appeared at CTIA, told us: "In terms of Flash Lite, Japan has been the first and foremost, and then Europe and now it is gaining in the U.S." For instance, little do people know that Flash is used on some of the popular phones, including the LG (SEO: 066570) Shine, Venus and Voyager. "We can enable these experiences to be richer, or more...

Verizon Wireless's ( NYSE: VZ ) $28.1 billion acquisition of Alltel will create the largest U.S. wireless carrier, but at the same time, it will eliminate one of the most innovative carriers in the country, which begs the question: Is Verizon buying Alltel for its towers and subscribers, or also for its forward-looking approach to the market? As a regional carrier, Alltel may only serve 13 million subscribers in limited territories, but that gives the company a level of comfort and flexibility to quickly roll-out new services without the constraints larger carriers face. It doesn't worry that millions of users will start using a new service overnight that crash the network, and it doesn't have to train as many customer-service and retail representatives every time it launches a new phone or application. So, the concern is that once apart of Verizon this attitude will fade. Some of it probably will, but if the merger gains regulatory approval, will companies lose an important petri dish, or gain a larger one? As an example, Alltel was Seattle-based Ontela first customer. CEO Dan Shapiro said he heard about the potential merger yesterday while in a board meeting. Immediately, the topic of conversation focused on how it would affect the industry. "There's two different thoughts," he said. "There's the conventional wisdom that the big carrier eats smaller carriers, and all good things come to the end," he said. But they came up with a second scenario: "They are buying a hard asset with towers and subscribers—that's 80 percent of the truth. Another piece, is that Alltel has been a pioneer that experiments with the way to bring value to its subscribers, outside of text and voice services, and that's valuable. They have a full-time business development person in Seattle to make sure that everything gets back to Little Rock. I strongly suspect that Verizon sees that culture of innovation and that skill-set as a way to maximize...

Two recent reports are weighing in on the big question facing the wireless industry: will rising data revenues make up for slower subscriber growth in the U.S.? Facts: The U.S. penetration rates reached 84 percent at the end of 2007. Last year, annual U.S. data revenues totaled $23.2 billion, or 17 percent of overall revenues totaling $139 billion, according to CTIA . Here's the two sides of the debate: Yes: If you can use other countries as a model, the answer is yes. In countries, such as Japan and Korea, premium content has seen dramatic growth with some operators recording data revenues exceeding 30 percent. The main drivers are premium content, such as full-track music downloads, mobile games, but increasingly also things like mobile video, according to MultiMedia Intelligence . Separately, some U.S. operators believe that revenues may increase from other sources as wireless chipsets are put in all sorts of devices going forward, including cars and home electronics. No: A transition from subscriber-led growth to data-led growth is coming, but it won't happen smoothly, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co . The study found that subscriber growth is decelerating sharply in the U.S., with the industry adding 23 percent fewer new subscribers in the first quarter compared to a year ago. Today, subscriber growth—not data ARPU growth—still accounts for nearly 90 percent of wireless revenue growth at Verizon Wireless ( NYSE: VZ ) and AT&T ( NYSE: T ). By 2010, they expect the market to reach full penetration at 89 percent. "We are entering a share game rather than a growth game....We believe that wireless sub growth is likely to decelerate too quickly to be easily offset by rising ARPU (average revenue per user). We expect a "U-shaped" growth trajectory, where overall revenue and EBITDA growth can be expected to slow significantly before re-accelerating."

— AOL ( NYSE: TWX ) Offers WAP Games: AOL plans to announce today that it is offering free WAP-based mobile games to wireless subscribers, so they don't have to download anything to the phone. Such games as Call of the Pharaoh, Space Wars and Ice Fishing will be provided by Cellufun through AOL's mobile portal at http://wap.aol.com/games . The free games will be subsidized by ads sold by AOL's Third Screen Media. — Ringing Up Facebook photos: Vringo said it will launch a new Facebook application today that lets users import their friend's photos from Facebook to their phones and syncs them with the appropriate contact. When a Facebook friend calls, their photo will appear on their phone screen as part of caller ID. For now, the app will be free, and available to BlackBerrys Windows Mobile devices. — Verizon Wireless ( NYSE: VZ ) Launches Five New Phones: RIM's BlackBerry Curve will be available in May on its EV-DO network, and come with navigation service; The LG (SEO: 066570) enV2 (think squared), the successor to the popular enV, will launch with ton of music services and have dual speakers. The phone will be slimmer and come in a black or maroon finish and be available in April; the white XV6900 will be available in April, targeting business users with a touchscreen and Windows Mobile 6; the MOTO Q 9c will also come in April, and be loaded with navigation; and finally Verizon's launching the Samsung Alias, the successor to the SCH-u74. it will be available mid-April and have a silver finish, a full-QWERTY keyboard when opened horizontally, and will be a normal clamshell when opened vertically. — MySpace CTIA Presence: MySpace plans to announce today that subscribers of five more carriers will be able to sign up for a text alerts that provides users almost immediate notification of new messages, friend requests, comments and other stuff. Through the help of mBox, the five new carriers are: Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, Alltel Wireless ( NYSE...

AT&T ( NYSE: T ) is hoping for the same star-studded performance from Guitar Hero that Verizon Wireless ( NYSE: VZ ) experienced after it watched the mobile game become Verizon's third-best selling for all of 2007 despite only being for sale for the last part of December. AT&T has launched Hands-On Mobile's Guitar Hero III Mobile on a number of handsets today. The popular console game has translated surprisingly well to mobile. On the console version, players use a mock guitar to sync finger movements and strumming in sync with the music on the TV. On mobile, they've replicated the experience by challenging players to hit numbers on their keypad in sync with notes that scroll across the screen. If a player hits all of the special notes, they'll build up star power, which can be activated to get double points. A rock meter measures how well you are doing—as you miss notes, you chance upsetting the crowd and being booed off of the stage. Guitar Hero III Mobile has 15 tracks, including "Suck My Kiss" (by Red Hot Chili Peppers) and "Rock You Like A Hurricane" (as made famous by The Scorpions), and then offers players a new song each month.