Mobile Bits and bobs

I've been a bit slack on the blogging front....busy times.So I thought I'd write another summary as the last one proved quite popular....

Michael Mace continues to deliver the goods over at Mobile Opportunity with a great article and some original analysis on mobile data and handset segmentation. Mr Mace argues the existence of three main handset segments (entertainment e.g. NGage, communication e.g Treo, and information e.g. PDA) and that what lies intersecting all three is the "Zone of Death". IMHO, the "zone of death" presents the biggest opportunity IF the device manufacturer can get the UI and marketing right, and I dont mean market it as a Swiss/army phone. Surely, the mass market needs a credible combination of all 3 capabilties? Communication, Entertainment and Information are converging right? (2ndLife, WOW, Habbo, Pica etc)

Paul Fisher of FirstCapital has written a great overview of VC activity in Europe during 2006. This was a great read as most of the coverage I see is about the US with little to no European specific coverage (except TornadoInsider). Looking at who raised what and from who is also interesting - I'm still amazed that one of my favourite mobile services Zyb only raise 0.6m - a very slick backup service that works on most mobiles - i'd happily pay for that.
And while were on the subject of VC, AlarmClock Euro has a good summary of mobile-related 3i trade sales and an interview with Snr Partner, Ian Lobley.

I noticed that Steve Ives (former founder of trigenix which was sold to Qualcomm in 04) has started a mobile search company called Taptu - nothing to see but one to watch.

And again, while we're on mobile search, i came across a refreshing approach to mobile content search from MogMo - take a look.

Google acquires Nevenvision

Google announced on Tuesday that they had acquired Nevenvision, a small but well armoured visual search/recognition leader with significant IP and a smart team. Google had been rumoured to have been looking in to Riya but jumped on nevenvision instead. Google has mastered the interpretation, analysis and monetisation of text-based search requests, and Nevenvision takes it a step further in doing the same for images. Nevenvision had(has) an interesting product portfolio with a viable solution for mobile phone image search. With Infotrends predicting 228 billion images being taken on camera phones by 2010, exceeding the number of photos taken on digital still cameras and film cameras combined, this looks like a prudent and timely purchase.

William Slawski has a good overview of Googles other recent acquisitions


Previous related post: NeoMedia acquires Mobot (Aug 05)

WAMPAD - mobile search verticals

Wampad presents a fresh approach to mobile search. It offers a topic menu from which you can choose the domain which is most relevant to your search query, using best of breed information and content sources from which it extracts your results. For example, if youre looking for news, it draws on Google News, for movie info, you can search IMDB, for images it turns to Flickr and so on.

02/06 great in-depth review of wampad at wapreview

Vodafone and Google team to create innovative mobile search experience for mobile phone users

more here

Visual search - NeoMedia acquires Mobot

Neomedia has acquired mobot for @$12m, mostly stock. Neomedia holds some valuable patents on 2D barcode recognition, which enables consumers to take a picture of a product with their cameraphone, interpret the image as a web link and receive product information , special offers etc. Mobot compliments the Neomedia offering with a solution that doesnt necessitate the installation of a s/w client on the terminal.
Nevenvision are also a key player in the visual search space.

NeoMedia has an eclectic range of products - mobile search, it integration and an auto paint repair system!

more on mobile search

go here

Mobile Search

Mobile search is going to be a big topic. And its not just a case of putting a mobile interface on to an existing web service. The mobile environment presents opportunities for intelligent search (location, environment, advertising etc) and also a number of challenges (keypad entry, screen size, display limits to results etc). yahoo and google have recently entered this space and 4Info and Caboodle are the new start-ups to watch.
14/07 - also Medio Systems
29/09 - "mobile operators fear the Google effect" - VNUNet
05/10 - JumpTap (similar UI to MotionBridge)