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  • Android Developer Challenge Winner Big In Japan Gets $700k Seed Money

    Dallas-based Big in Japan has received $700,000 in seed financing from Architel LP just after winning $275K in Google's Android Developer Challenge last month. ShopSavvy, a personal shopping assistant developed by Big in Japan for the Android platform, was one of 10 winners out of 1,800 entries. The application will be available when the first Android device launches later this month. ( Release ). Related Google Picks Winners From Final Round Of Android Developer Challenge Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
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  • Interview: Jean-David Begin, BlackBerry Partner Fund: Cautiously Moving Toward 20 Investments

    Two weeks ago we talked to Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers' iFund Manager Matt Murphy about his thoughts on investing in companies building applications for the iPhone. At CTIA, we caught up with BlackBerry Partner's Fund investment team member Jean-David Begin , who was busy traveling between Palo Alto and the convention floor with two other members to meet with a host of potential investments. The BlackBerry Fund was announced earlier this year just after the iFund, and is designed to invest in applications using the BlackBerry platform, as well as a host of other mobile products and services for various platforms. To be clear, the fund is an independent entity, not an investment arm of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion , so Begin has no inside information as to what RIM may or may not be doing. He shared his opinions on the hot sectors in mobile, his desire for cash-efficient companies with a chance of IPO exits, how some mobile companies are overvalued and unreleased Android's need to prove itself. Some highlights from our conversation: Tell me about the BlackBerry Partners Fund : "It's a $150 million fund, and we are a traditional venture capital firm. We aren't a investment arm of RIM ( NSDQ: RIMM ). RIM is one of three anchor-limited partners along with Royal Bank of Canada and Thomson Reuters ( NASDAQ: TRIN ), and we have a couple of other partners with smaller stakes. The thesis is because of the availability of smartphones and the ease of the deployment of applications—the best example being Apple's App store—in the next couple of years, there will be an explosion of wireless applications. The whole thing coalesced earlier this year and then we basically got the support of our anchor partners." Did the formation of the iFund play a role? : "Not really...It often happens that a lot of smart people and experienced people in the industry realize a couple things at the same time ... obviously the iFund was announced...
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  • Google Working On a Formal VC Arm

    Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) has done a number of strategic investments over the years, and usually big amounts in big-issue-tackling companies, like powerline internet, Wimax, and others. It even has a non-profit Google.org foundation to invest in global challenges. Now it wants to start a formal venture capital arm, a la Intel ( NSDQ: INTC ) Capital, Time Warner ( NYSE: TWX ) Investment, Steamboat (Disney's ( NYSE: DIS ) venture arm) or BlueRun Ventures (formerly part of Nokia), reports WSJ , citing sources. The group will be lead by David Drummond, Google's SVP of corp dev, chief legal officer, and it has also hired William Maris, a 33-year-old former entrepreneur who has worked as an investor, to help set up the venture. What's Google's advantage over other VC funds? Well, technical expertise, reach and distribution, and then in-built tools for monetization of services and products for these startups. This new venture could help institutionalize some of Google's previous investments, and maybe even look at some new/allied areas of expansion and investment. Our mobile application for Blackberry and other Smartphones brings you the latest headlines when you're on the go. Go here to download .
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  • @ MobileBeat: Bang or Bust?

    Good luck getting anyone on this panel to say mobile is heading toward a bust, but you have to give the organizers props for at least raising the question. The MobileBeat 2008 conference hasn't strayed much from the to-be-expected hype surrounding the recent launch of the iPhone 3G and App Store, but there was some good debate surrounding the potential of new platforms entering the fray and what, if anything, new things they bring to the mobile scene. What's different about these new platforms? It's simple and nothing you haven't heard before – traffic. Loopt CEO and co-founder Sam Altman said iPhone users use Loopt at a rate 47 times higher than the average user. "I've heard that from every single person that's built an application for the iPhone." Rich Miner , group manager of mobile and the Android platform at Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ), said it's more of a confluence of great minds rather than a seismic shift. Comparing mobile phone capabilities to the PC circa 2002 -2003, he said the biggest change is that software developers are playing a bigger role in the space than ever before. "What the iPhone store does is it gives developers control of their own destiny … It really comes down to building the best-in-class application." Matt Murphy, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers and head of their "iFund" investment pool for the iPhone, said early results from the App Store prove the potential growth opportunity. In just 10 days more applications were downloaded for the iPhone than what a carrier will typically see in a month from wallpaper and ringtone sales, he said. So what can Android do that the iPhone can't? Surprisingly, Miner declined to head into this one and handed it off to Altman who said location-based services and data pushing work much better on Android for starters. Android's economic model: "It's certainly better if we can have a single marketplace," Miner said, but they...
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  • Symbian As We Know It Dissolves On Its 10th Anniversary; More Details On Nokia's $410 Million Buyout

    Nokia announced this morning that it will pay $410 million to buy the remaining shares of Symbian that it did not already own and then turn the assets into a foundation that provides open-source software to developers. What we are talking about here is not a simple task, and as an executive in the morning conference call said, to their knowledge, this is the largest open-source endeavor that anyone has attempted—it brings together millions of lines of code that companies have invested billions of dollars in to create, and now the goal is to make it free to developers and handset makers alike. This radical move by Nokia, and the collapse of Symbian as we know it today (on its 10th anniversary no less) shows how rapidly the wireless industry moves, and clearly demonstrates the mounting competition incumbents are feeling from new entrants, such as the LiMo Foundation, which supports a Linux platform, and Google's ( NSDQ: GOOG ) Android operating system, and even platforms such as Microsoft's ( NSDQ: MSFT ) and Apple's. Presentation. There's still a lot to be figured out, but here are some details on how it will come together based on a conference call hosted by Nokia, Symbian, Motorola ( NYSE: MOT ) and Sony ( NYSE: SNE ) Ericsson ( NSDQ: ERIC ) this morning: -- Symbian's current market position: This year, already 20 new devices have been announced on Symbian version 9 that were made by five handset manufactures. This year, Symbian will surpass 200 million cumulative sales since its inception 10 years ago. According to Canalys, the leading operating-system smartphone market for the past year as of Q1 was broken down like this: Symbian (60 percent); Linux (12 percent); Microsoft (11 percent); RIM ( NSDQ: RIMM ) (11 percent); Apple ( NSDQ: AAPL ) (4 percent); Other (2 percent). -- Platform consolidation: The purchase of Symbian by Nokia and the formation of the foundation will lead to platform consolidation. Nokia will contribute its S60 platform, Symbian...
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  • Clearwire Tells Investors To Expect 30.8 Million Subs By 2017

    In a presentation to investors today, Clearwire peeled back its cloak of secrecy and detailed some of its future plans, just over a month after it signed a deal with Sprint ( NYSE: S ), Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ), Comcast ( NSDQ: CMCSA ), Time Warner ( NYSE: TWX ) and Brighthouse to build a nationwide WiMax network. The most interesting information from the 31-page slide presentation was Clearwire's aggressive goals when it comes to building out new markets and projecting the number of subscribers it will have by 2017. In addition, the company said it sees a lot of its growth coming from selling multiple products to its subscribers, including residential broadband, residential voice, mobile broadband, mobile voice and mobile entertainment. Of those five products, they estimate that people may spend between $109 and $258 a month on Clearwire ( NSDQ: CLWR ). Separately, ArsTechnica dug up a document Clearwire filed with the FCC asking for the ability to merge both Clearwire and Sprint's spectrum holdings. In the filing, Clearwire smartly argues that it will provide the true "third pipe" Internet access to home and mobile users at speeds of 6Mbps and 3Mbps uplink. Webcast. Slides. 2009: Clearwire expects to serve 1.3 million customers in a territory that covers up to 80 million people. On average, a customer will sign up for 1.2 products. 2010: Clearwire forecasts having 4.6 million customers in a territory covering up to 140 million people. Of those customers, 1.8 million would be wholesale subscribers, coming via Sprint or a cable partner. On average, customers will have 1.3 products. 2011: Clearwire forecasts having 8.5 million customers in a territory covering up to 160 million people. Of those customers, 3.7 million will be wholesale. On average, customers will be using 1.5 products. 2014: Clearwire forecasts having 19.5 million customers in a territory covering about 200 million people. Of those customers, 9 million will be wholesale. On average, they...
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  • MSFT-YHOO Roundup: Mobile Implications Under the Microscope

    Microsoft's $44.6 billion dollar proposed bid for Yahoo ( NSDQ: YHOO ) continues to grab headlines, and more writers and analysts have pondered the implications for the mobile market. The deal wasn't, of course, proposed solely because of the potential wireless opportunities that the two could exploit, but as Ovum analyst John Delaney wrote in a research note, mobile "could be the icing on the cake" for the two as their mobile activities complement each other and could "exert a hefty counterweight to Google's mobile strategy". Delaney offers a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ) compared to the combined forces of Microhoo. He notes that the mobile web will be won by the portal(s) that can offer up strong search, maps and messaging functioning, and that Microhoo could deliver this very well, given Microsoft's efforts with its Windows Mobile operating system, and Yahoo's concentrated efforts on the consumer applications side. Delaney notes that Microhoo is actually strongest where Google is currently weakest: in messaging. But the Ovum analyst also warns all three need to keep buttering up the operators, because without their cooperation, mobile portals aren't going to get anywhere. As Delaney says, "Operators control data tariffing and in many markets they dominate the handset supply chain. It will be hard for any Internet portal player to achieve critical mass without favourable conditions in these two areas." Forbes has also looked at what the bid could mean for mobile, and comes to much of the same conclusions as Delaney: Windows Mobile OS on the Microsoft ( NSDQ: MSFT ) side plus Yahoo's consumer applications could threaten Google's mobile web aspirations. Yankee Group senior analyst Jill Adloft makes an interesting point—consumers are going to want "an entryway into the internet from their mobile phone." Adloft said, "They want a homepage like they...
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