I’m headed to Barcelona tomorrow and will be rolling around the Catalonian country-side for a few days before MWC, which starts next Monday. I’d love to talk to start-up folk and/or fans in B-town and Girona. My number in Spain, thanks to the super-cool MaxRoam, will be +34957780732 and my SMS-only number will be +972543563127. I’m also available via email.

I’d like to plan a CG/MC meet-up on Wednesday at about 6pm. Drop me a line @ john at crunchgear dot com if you’d like to sit down for a beer, a chat, and a bit of tapas.

Via Mobilecrunch

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Greystripe announced today that it has added ten new distribution partners for Greystripe’s AdWRAP Catalog Platform. Greystripe is the world’s largest distributor of ad-supported mobile games and applications. 40 partners now account for 85% of all downloads of Greystripe titles.

AdWRAP was launched a year ago and now has 40 partners including Zedge, Cellware, Tagtag, Funformobile, GameMobile.co.uk, Kobrawap, Lasyk, Esato, MobileRated and Buzzcity. Greystripe’s own site, Gamejump.com, accounts for the other 15% of downloads.

“We partnered with Greystripe because they are the clear leader in bringing ad-supported mobile games to the world, “said John Ferber, CEO of Cellware.”Our mobile community is hungry for high quality mobile content, and now we can provide the content they want for free.”

The AdWRAP Catalog Platform enables mobile Web sites, Internet portals, mobile applications, wireless carriers, and social communities to distribute Greystripe’s catalog of over 900 mobile games to their users. The Platform is a hosted and customizable combination of mobile Web and Internet technologies that can be tailored to the look and feel of any site.

“Greystripe has demonstrated a demand from both consumers and publishers, that ad-supported content is a viable way to spur mobile content adoption,” Julien Theys, Research Analyst of Mobile Media’s Screen Digest.

“We’re all moving the mobile industry forward by fostering the ad-supported content business model, educating and engaging the end user,” says Alvaro Bravo, VP of Business Development at Greystripe. “Our strategy is to syndicate our catalog to gain the widest reach for our advertisers with a highly engaged audience.”

Juniper Research predicted last week that mobile games sales will increase in North America from less that $800 million to over $3 billion by 2012. Free demos and ad supported games are two of the business models that will fuel the expansion of mobile gaming. Greystripe is positioning itself to take advantage of the future demand for downloadable handset games.

Via Mobilecrunch

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Each week MobileCrunchArcade compiles the biggest news from the world of mobile gaming.

Vivendi Games Mobile announced a list of its big name game releases that will become available in the first half of this year. Most of these titles are based on television shows and movies, so if the Hollywood writer’s strike is getting you down you can look to your mobile phone for comfort. Titles include: Prison Break, based on a Fox television show; SWAT Elite Troops, a sequel to the 2006 Spike TV Videogames Awards Mobile Game of the Year; The Bourne Conspiracy, based on Robert Ludlum’s books and blockbuster film franchise; The Spiderwick Chronicles, an adaptation from the upcoming movie with the same title. Vivendi will also be releasing Wordox: Word Snatcher, a network-connected multiplayer game based on the popular Wordox online game. So forget about re-runs and reality television. Grab your mobile phone and get into some fun entertainment.

Juniper Research released a report this week that predicts mobile gaming revenues in North America will increase from less than $800 million to over $3 billion by 2012. (Incidentally, 2012 is the year the Mayan colander ends. I’m hoping they just ran out of rock to chisel on and weren’t predicting the end of the world.) 18 million Americans download or rent mobile games a least once per year, but Juniper predicts that as user interfaces improve and business models change, the number of mobile gamers will greatly increase. Juniper predicts that in-game advertising, free trial periods and better marketing will all come together to make mobile gaming a billion dollar industry in North America. Mobile gaming is a great leap in civilization. Even the Mayans couldn’t cradle all that greatness in a handheld calendar.

If bikini-clad women around a pool excite you, you will be happy to learn that THQ Wireless has partnered with Playboy Enterprises to bring Playboy-branded mobile games to the palm of your hand. The first release, set for launch this summer, is Playboy Games: Pool Party. Hef’s hotties compete in water balloon fights, waterslide slaloms and aquatic mechanical bull riding. Don’t worry, this game won’t make you go blind but it could run your battery down.

Tom and Jerry are back in an as yet named game from GlobalFun. The cat and mouse have already appeared in a couple of mobile titles from Glu Mobile, but Glu has since lost the rights to the popular cartoon characters. In this next incarnation, you play Jerry as he tries to navigate through 12 levels of a frantic maze across a house, garden and basement. There are many traps and one angry cat to avoid as the intrepid Jerry forges ahead. There is even cheese, which is rumored to be a mouse delicacy. I must admit I’ve never been a fan of Tom & Jerry. I always cheer for the cat but somehow the mouse is always able to thwart him.

That is this week’s mobile gaming news roundup. Remember to exercise those thumbs, recharge the battery and never take your eyes off the screen.

Via Mobilecrunch

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A&E Television Networks (AETN) is partnering with Crisp Wireless to create and manage mobile websites for three of AETN’s channels. The websites will provide information and downloads for A&E Network, The History Channel and BIO.

“This initiative is a great way for us to extend our consumer’s passion for our brands and programming to a mobile audience,” said Paul Jelinek, Senior Vice President, Digital Media for AETN. “We look forward to working closely with Crisp to create branded mobile experiences that our audiences can take with them on the go.”

“A&E Television Networks has a long reputation for creating quality programming that inspires fans to stay tuned. Now they can stay tuned wherever they go,” said Boris Fridman, CEO of Crisp Wireless. “We are extremely pleased to work with AETN to help them build a mobile advertising channel.”

The websites will have information on what tonight’s primetime line-up is, program descriptions and photos, fan polls and trivia games, and downloadable wallpapers and ring tones.

The History Mobile site will offer This Day in History, a popular feature from the History Channel, which highlights important historical events. Through the mobile website users can also sign up to receive “This Day in History” SMS alerts on their cell phones. The BIO site will have biographies of celebrities, politicians and other people in the news.

I must admit that I am excited about this. I read a lot of history and enjoy watching the History Channel. But I am bothered that the mobile site may not be what I hope it should be. History is more than just names and dates. It’s about analyzing the past and coming up with theories as to why things happened the way they did. Two historians can look at the same names and dates but come up with totally different views of the events. I suppose I study history because I want something that will help me predict the future. I’m no Nostradamus and my tarot cards just collect dust these days.

Via Mobilecrunch

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After the New York stock market closed yesterday, Motorola announced that it is considering ways to deal with its ailing mobile phone division. Some have speculated this means selling or spinning-off the division, but the statement’s language leaves open other possibilities.

Motorola said it would consider separating the handset division from the company and that it is looking at ways to “better equip its mobile devices business to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value.” This leaves the door open for an outright sale, a spin-off, restructuring or a joint venture with another company.

Last month MobileCrunch reported that Motorola(’s) Handset Market Share and Profits (were) Down. At the end of 2006 Motorola had 23% of the worldwide mobile handset market share. By the end of 2007 this share dropped to only 13%.

Yesterday’s announcement sent Motorola share up 12%, or $1.40, to $12.90 at the open of today’s trading.

Last year the company fought off a proxy fight with billionaire financier Carl Icahn. Icahn wanted some of his people on the board of directors and an overhaul of Motorola. Icahn said he was “pleased” to hear that the company is working on changing but he still plans to fight for board seats the spring.

“This announcement by Motorola will not deter us from that effort,” said the shareholder, who is believed to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars on his investment in the company. “We believe Motorola is finally moving in the right direction but certainly still has a long way to go.”

Motorola said that separating the mobile devices division would “permit each business to grow and better serve its customers.” The two smaller divisions are home and network mobility, which sells TV set-top boxes and modems, and enterprise mobility solutions, which sells computing and communications equipment.

“We are exploring ways in which our mobile devices business can accelerate its recovery and retain and attract talent while enabling our shareholders to realize the value of this great franchise,” Motorola CEO Greg Brown said in a written statement.

Via Mobilecrunch

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Stalinist North Korea has contracted with the Egyptian company Orascom Telecom to provide mobile phone service in the communist country. North Korea began mobile service in November 2002 but within 18 months banned the service for ordinary citizens and recalled handsets. It is believed the network is still available for government officials.

The deal will give Orascom Telecom a 25-year lease throughout the country, with an exclusivity period of four years.

“Orascom Telecom intends to invest up to 400 million dollars in network infrastructure and license fee over the first three years in order to rapidly deploy a high quality network and offer voice, data and value-added services at accessible prices to the Korean people,” the company said.

North Korea has a population of 23 million. Orascom will cover Pyongyang and most major cities in the first year of operations.

The North Korea deal “is in line with our strategy to penetrate countries with high population and low penetration by providing the first mobile telephony services,” said Naguib Sawiris, chairman and CEO.

The firm “has consistently proved its ability to successfully roll out mobile services into countries where no other operator has.”

Via Mobilecrunch

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Comstar UTS, a Russian land-line operator, announced today that it has started building a mobile broadband network using WiMax technology in Armenia. Comstar will buy base station equipment from Airspan Networks.

“We intend to launch the network this year and, therefore, become the first and the largest wireless broadband Internet operator in Armenia,” Comstar’s president, Sergei Pridantsev, said in a statement.

The WiMax network is scheduled provide commercial service in the second half of this year. A Comstar spokeswoman said the net work will cover 75% of Armenia’s population.

Comstar is part of the Russian conglomerate Sistema. Comstar provides voice, data, Internet, pay-TV and other services.

Via Mobilecrunch

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Analysis from growth consulting company Frost and Sullivan predicts that Africa’s demand for mobile Internet access will increase between 40% and 50% between 2006 and 2009. It is thought that this expansion is due to the continent’s lack of sufficient fixed line structure and the reduced cost of handset and mobile internet service prices.

“The poor state of fixed line infrastructure is creating the potential for the African mobile internet market to boom,” states Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Spiwe Chireka. “Mobile internet has emerged as the solution to the continent’s last mile connectivity problem.”

Mobile Internet is much more cost-effective than fixed line infrastructure. Large areas can be covered with broadcast signals cheaply that allow users to access services on the go. But all the news is not good. The cost of mobile internet-compatible handsets and pricing for services puts the Internet out of reach for most of Africa’s population.

The poor infrastructure of some countries is holding back Internet availability. A lack of reliable electricity and inadequate road networks makes it difficult to access remote areas.

“Mobile internet service providers need to form partnerships with cellular companies as well as technology and infrastructure providers to see how best they can provide cheaper or more affordable handsets that will provide good quality service,” advises Chireka. “They should also form partnerships with governments across Africa and work out investment plans to improve telecommunications infrastructures so that deployment of such services is not limited.”

If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview of the investment analysis and growth opportunities in Africa’s mobile Internet access market, then send an email to Patrick Cairns, Corporate Communications, at patrick.cairns[.]frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, fax number, and email address. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by email.

MobileCrunch reported on Africa’s Sierra Leone in August. See: Former Dark Continent Brightens with Mobile Internet.

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Connectivity Scorecard, a system that ranks countries on around 30 indicators that measure how will a country boosts its social and economic prosperity through telecommunications technologies, puts the United States at the head of the list. The system was created by London Business School professor Leonard Waverman to examine how well countries utilize networks, cell phones and computers.

The study was paid for by Nokia Siemens Networks. Professor Ilkka Lakaniemi said this new approach to studying telecommunications puts a country like South Korea in the middle of the list because it isn’t simply based on investment in telecommunications but on usage.

“All the other rankings mainly measure only how much have you invested in ICT (information and communication technologies),” said Professor Ilkka Lakaniemi.

“You have a lot of consumer applications, you have a lot of entertainment applications, a lot of this and that, but they do not really add much to productivity,” Lakaniemi said.

The United States, which has benefited the most from ICT, was rated below 7 out of 10. This is mostly due to a weak usage of broadband networks. All countries surveyed have much room for improvement.

“These results indicate an opportunity for countries to add hundreds of billions of dollars in economic benefit by rethinking how they measure and enable connectivity,” the study said.

The following are the rankings of innovation driven economies that are rated by the study on a scale of 1-10:

United States 6.97; Sweden 6.83; Japan 6.80; Australia 5.93; Germany 5.52; France 5.07; South Korea 4.78; Hong Kong 4.46; Italy 3.85; Spain 3.56; Hungary 3.18; Czech Republic 3.11.

The following are indexes for efficiency and resource drive economies, scale 1-10, but not comparable with indexes for innovative-driven economies:

Russia 6.11; Malaysia 5.82; Mexico 4.37; Brazil 4.28; South Africa 4.11; China 3.42; Philippines 2.38; India 1.68; Nigeria 1.01.

Via Mobilecrunch

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T-Mobile USA added 951,000 subscriptions between October and December of 2007. This gives the country’s fourth largest mobile phone company a subscription customer base of 28.7 million. T-Mobile’s sales were up 14.6% over 2006 numbers.

Shareholders of Deutsche Telekom AG, the T-Mobile parent company, were asking for the sale of T-Mobile USA last year. Chief Executive Rene Obermann fended off those demands last June, saying that T-Mobile USA can add 5 million new subscribers by the end of 2007. T-Mobile USA fell short of that goal and only sold 3.6 million subscriptions in all of 2007.

T-Mobile USA’s growth did outdo the 9% growth that Deutsche Telekom posted in the European market. Since November, T-Mobile’s German unit sold 70,000 iPhones. T-Mobile is the exclusive iPhone provider in Germany. Worldwide, Deutsche Telekom has 119.6 million subscribers.

Via Mobilecrunch

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