Mobile Industry News 10/15/2009

Quattro Wireless’ daily take on interesting and important news for the mobile industry.  See something we missed?  Post it in the comments or send it our way on twitter @intheq

Finalists announced for 2009 MITX Awards

Quattro Wireless’ campaign for the Concha y Toro wine label has advanced as one of four finalists for the best of Mobile 2009 in the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange Awards.

Will BlackBerry give Android, iPhone a run for their money?

from Mobile Marketer Homepage

With all of the buzz around marketing on the iPhone and Android-enabled devices, there seems to be a sleeping giant left behind in the dust.

What are the hottest smartphones in Europe?

from FierceWireless

Apple's iPhone has set the benchmark for the smartphone market. In Europe, operators that secured exclusive deals with Apple for the iPhone have benefited, while those that did not were seen as losing out in terms of new subscribers and buzz.  Meanwhile, other handset makers--including HTC, Nokia and Research In Motion--are not standing still, and are competing with Apple for primacy in the smartphone market. FierceWireless:Europe has produced a guide of the top smartphones to help cut through the hype, complete with analyst commentary from Tim Shepherd of Canalys and Winsdor Holden of Juniper Research

The new dream house: Intellipowered makes your home smarter than you

from VentureBeat

Most VentureBeat readers are probably familiar with Back to the Future 2’s vision of home automation — appliances that hydrate pizzas at voice command, and thumbprint activated door locks. Now Intellipowered, a Texas-based home automation startup — is making even more modern versions of this home a reality (with five years to spare before 2015, even).

The company doesn’t just have one area of expertise — it’s goal is to make almost every electronic component in your home smarter, faster and, seemingly, voice or motion-activated. Here’s a brief overview of its offerings:

The ability to control music, lights, heating and air conditioning and even individual appliances remotely from your smart phone

See how the BlackBerry Storm2 stacks up against the original Storm

from FierceWireless

After months of buildup, Research In Motion released a new version of its touchscreen BlackBerry. The Storm2 looks to address many of the hangups critics poked at on the original version, though it retains the same basic functions and dimensions. Check out how the BlackBerry Storm2 compares with the original version, released a year ago.
 
iPhone Sales: Now Bigger Than Ever

from GigaOM

It’s a great time to be a phone buyer, for we are seeing a whole new crop of what The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg calls super smartphones (I prefer the simpler “superphones”) come to the market. Motorola’s CLIQ, an Android-based device that launched at our Mobilize 09 conference, is just the latest device to make its market debut. I will eventually get around to my review, but the handset is solid and MotoBlur is a refreshing take on the mobile web.There are several more handsets powered by Google’s Android OS that will be released in coming months. And despite all that, Apple’s iPhone is unstoppable.

MLBAM Averaged 350,000 Live, Paid Video Streams Per First-Round Game; 10 Percent On iPhone/iTouch

from mocoNews

As baseball gears up for round two of the 2009 playoffs—the Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers take the field tonight—we have the first peek at some stats you won’t see in box scores. Major League Baseball Advanced Media served an average of 350,000 live streams during each game in the first round of the 2009 baseball playoffs through its Postseason.TV subscription. The video split: 314,000 streams via PCs on MLB.com and 36,000 to iPhone/iTouch devices via the MLB At Bat app

 
Dictionary.com launches BlackBerry app to drive users to Web site

from Mobile Marketer Homepage Feed

Dictionary.com launched a free dictionary and thesaurus application for RIM's BlackBerry in an effort to woo mobile users to its ad-supported Web site.

 
Online retailers must look to mobile commerce

from Mobile Marketer Homepage Feed

As the usage of next-generation mobile phones grows and mobile technology advances, bringing ecommerce to consumers will mean delivering it to their mobile devices

 
The flood starts: Layar, Urbanspoon bring augmented reality to iPhone

from VentureBeat

Two big entrants in the world of augmented reality today brought their apps to the iPhone today.

Both Layar, one of Europe’s pioneers in augmented reality browsing, and the popular restaurant-finding app Urbanspoon are using the technology to mark up the real world. Augmented reality is a nascent field that lets developers superimpose data and graphics on a camera’s viewfinder (kind of like how the Terminator scopes out targets, but not deadly).

Qualcomm Will Roll Out Its First Cross-Platform App Store In Brazil

from mocoNews

Qualcomm will launch its first cross-platform app store with TIM, allowing the Brazilian operator to compete directly with handset-makers that are launching stores of their own.