Local mobile firms grow despite recession

Many local start-ups and small firms are sucking wind when it comes to raising money in today's tough economy, but Mobile Monday Boston notes a contrarian trend in its sector of the market.

Mobile Monday Boston bills itself as the locally-run chapter of a global community of professionals and enthusiasts interested in mobile and wireless technologies, and the chapter claims that $215 million was invested in Massachusetts mobile companies during this year's first quarter.

"This figure makes Q109 the biggest for mobile investment in the last five quarters," Mobile Monday Boston said in a press release.

In January, Nuance Communications Inc., a Burlington company that specializes in such technologies as speech recognition, sold 17.4 million shares of stock, valued at $175 million, Mobile Monday Boston said, and Quattro Wireless, a Waltham company that operates a network that enables advertisers to reach consumers on their mobile devices, raised $10 million during the quarter.

"Despite reports of widespread venture capital decline, mobile investment in Massachusetts is still on the rise,” Kate Imbach, cofounder and organizer of Mobile Monday Boston, said in a statement. "Boston is quickly establishing itself as the worldwide hub of mobile and wireless.”

Are you prepared for mobile marketing? It's right time for it.

Even in a down economy, people’s desire to communicate seems to be unquenchable.

I am not going to predict this to be the year of mobile marketing, since we have all seen that falsely predicted for a number of recent years now. But I have been very impressed by some key mobile trends that are on the rise. The fact that there are now more mobile devices than televisions and computers combined, speaks of opportunity to me! As marketers plan their engagement marketing strategies for the rest of the year, they should consider these important trends.

Text Messaging Surpasses Monthly Mobile Phone Calling: A recent Nielson study found that texting is now more popular than calling someone on your mobile phone. The tipping point seemed to come in Q3 of last year, when it was reported that 202 million of 263 million American wireless subscribers were now paying for text messaging either as part of a package or on a transaction basis. Not only are people signing up for text messaging, but they are texting at an amazing rate each month. What this translates into is a huge marketing opportunity for companies to make the move closer to “conversational marketing” with a broad audience of mobile users who are engaged and open to communicating with brands they know and trust..........

Verizon Wireless wants to cut down the number of mobile phone operating systems

Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) wants to cut down the number of mobile phone operating systems it needs to support in the next few years to speed up the time it takes to bring new applications to consumers, reports Reuters. Speaking at CTIA, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam, said that the carrier currently supports eight or nine operating systems, and wants to bring that number down to three or four. Other carriers, including co-owner Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and rival AT&T (NYSE: T) have made similar complaints about the proliferation of platforms. The AP reports, however, that though Verizon is a member of the LiMo Foundation, it won't be giving special weight to its version of Linux. That's despite last year's pledge from the carrier that LiMo's Linux would be the preferred platform. McAdam said, "We want to see what works well over time." No word on which other platforms might also make the cut.

Zer01, the new wireless carrier offering unlimited voice and data

Zer01, the new wireless carrier offering unlimited voice and data plans for just $69.95, has gone official with their network at CTIA Wireless 2009 in Las Vegas. Since their initial announcement earlier this month, Zer01 has been working hard to make it publicly known that they are not an MVNO. Given the MVNO fad’s spectacular failure last year, it’s not surprising that Zer01 would want to distance themselves from the “MVNO” label. But, are they really a “new” wireless carrier?

Zer01 CEO Ben Piilani took some time to give us a run-down on just what makes Zer01 such an innovative new wireless carrier. He starts off by explaining how Zer01 uses cell-towers throughout the US to route voice calls and data through Zer01’s own back-end servers. By licensing access to cell towers across the country, Zer01 can hook up just about any smartphone into their network. Zer01 manages to keep costs low and offer sub-$70 unlimited wireless plans by treating all network communications as data, which is routed through Zer01’s IP-based network. Voice calls are transformed into data packets and sent through Zer01’s redundant communications servers (note, they’re not sent over a carrier’s circuit-switched network).

Zer01 touts itself as an open network. Any smartphone user is welcome to bring their own smartphone to the Zer01 network. Getting Zer01 service is as easy as picking up a Zer01 SIM card, paying a $30 one-time activation fee, registering the Zer01 SIM online and popping the SIM into the smartphone. The Zer01 network will automatically detect the new SIM and send configuration files to your handset over-the-air. It really doesn’t get much easier than that.