Google’s charm offensive towards mobile developers seems to be intensifying. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Internet giant handed out free Nexus One handsets, which retail for more than $500, to several hundred developers attending presentations at the Android Development Lab.  read more »

For any software developers bemoaning the pain of having to rewrite apps for each of the many smartphone platforms, there was good news in the fourth quarter of 2009. A developer could reach 75% of the smartphones sold in that quarter by supporting just three platforms, Nokia/Symbian, RIM OS and Apple iPhone OS, according to figures from research firm Strategy Analytics.  read more »

Amid all the hype and excitement about Google "super phones" and iTablets at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, tried to divert everyone's attention to the opportunities in developing countries where smartphones are barely used.  read more »

What happens in Vegas, doesn't always stay in Vegas.

The two largest U.S. mobile operators, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, have used the Consumer Electronics Show in Sin City this week to stress that they aren't betrothed to any one smart phone platform. Far from it, both operators seem keen to portray themselves as promiscuous.  read more »

The Nexus One, Google's first mobile phone, raises the bar for high-end handsets, while undercutting its main rivals on price.  With its large, high-resolution screen, 1GHz processor and a second microphone for cancelling out background noise, it should be a potent platform for apps, particularly those with a voice-enabled interface.  read more »

by Richard Kramer, Arete Research

We see room for only three to four major handset software platforms by 2012.  The pace of innovation, R&D costs, and need for customisation (for hardware, operators and languages) invites consolidation.  Supporting original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and reaching out to developers is costly and labour-intensive; only over time might HTML5 browsers supplant device-specific applications. No platform is so productised as to simply hand over to licensees, either OEMs or operators.  read more »

A commercial launch of the so-called Nexus One, a prototype phone that will likely be branded and distributed solely by Google, could ultimately be bad for the long-term health of the mobile industry and its ability to innovate. Here's why:  read more »

The dilemma for developers: Should they create innovative native apps that take advantage of the unique features of a particular handset, such as the iPhone's accelerometer, or produce more basic apps that will run across many different handsets?  read more »