Wireless report

I was just reading through the business2.com wireless report. It’s a series of articles on what’s happening with mobile virtual networks like Virgin Mobile and a whole slew of new competitors – P Diddy being the most interesting. There are also articles on mobile gaming and mobile music services...

So far, Nokia has been the most aggressive pursuer of digital music. Last year the company shipped 10 million phones with built-in MP3 players. At the 3GSM conference in Cannes this week, Nokia announced agreements with Microsoft (MSFT) and Loudeye to create a mobile music platform and make it easier for consumers to transfer music between their PCs and phones. Nokia also unveiled several new handsets with built-in music players.

Archrival Sony Ericsson, the world's sixth-largest handset maker, recently said that music is its focus in 2005 and that, in the next few weeks, it will unveil several new handsets designed to mimic MP3 players. Late last year Motorola (MOT) announced a partnership with Apple (AAPL) to bring iTunes to mobile phones.

I have to agree with Matthew Maier when he says that cell phones probably won’t become the music player of choice this year. But as technology advances what is stopping the complete convergence of all devices? Doesn’t seem like anything. What makes the ipod so great (aside from marketing and content) is it holds 40GB, is easy to use and looks cool. But if it could be connected that would be great and then why not be a phone too?

I wonder if Slingmedia could be streamed to your handset? Probably not video yet – but streaming audio would be great.

Although, carriers would rather you purchase the content (music or video) through their networks, but if they could provide a copy of that libray, people would certainly pay for the access. This would allow carrriers to not have to get involved in the content side of the business (which they know very little about) and focus purely on the network.

To bring this post full circle, I wonder if any of the mobile virtual networks are planning this? Offering consumers this type of service would be a very compelling offer.

hmm anybody want to start a cellphone company?

Plaxo on my phone please

Thanks to Adam from Plaxo for adding a comment to my posting about phones. Seems they are offering WAP access as part of a Beta program. I went to the site, but because it’s beta and there is a “chance” I could lose info I chickened out. Adam also mentioned there is a lot of stuff coming down the pike – I’m very interested to see what they have in store.

I would love to see all my Plaxo information available as an option on my cellphone bill. I check it off and my phone and all other systems are sync’d - I would gladly pay a little charge for that each month, no problem.

I’m sure it will only be a matter of time until Plaxo makes a deal with a phone company or gets bought by one...

Digital Entertainment

In my previous post I talked about my trip to Best Buy on the weekend. For the first time I saw Microsoft Media Center in action. It was on a 52inch flat DLP, with surround sound, the computer was an HP Digital Entertainment Center. I was pretty impressed. It was great to have one central access to your computer, along with dvds, pictures and recorded/live tv. The resolution must have been 1280 pixels across it was great.

It seemed to work great as a computer - XP, easy to navigate with the remote keyboard, quick access to web, email, IM no problem. It would be great to work/play on this at night or on the weekends. Sitting on your couch and being able to multitask everything – convergence is here – where is AOL when all this is happening?

But then again, having a nice wireless laptop and a sweet TV is still probably better. Computer stuff is always better close up anyway, changes when it’s on a big screen and multiple people using it.

Having said that, it would be great to have a laptop with media center and use the dvd on the laptop to “broadcast” to the flat panel. This would be just like Apple’s Airport and Air Tunes expect for video that would be very cool.

A while back I was at a conference where a guy from HP was talking about the next wave for HP being the media center and the idea of digital entertainment. HP had started with digital photography and would be extending into what he called the “digital entertainment”. The concept being having all your media accessible from one system and through your flat panel, all your photos, music, home movies accessible in the living room.

Was this Carly’s vision for HP - to own digital entertainment?. HP certainly is leading the push – but it’s still early adopter. Was this her downfall? Being too early in an emerging market? We all know how long that strategy lasts…turns out she only got $45 million in severance – rough being a CEO these days.

About “digital entertainment” I certainly think it’s the future, but it will take time. The missing piece for me at the moment is that it is about storing data locally on your system. These systems have not incorporated the ability to share files across the web but things like slingmedia are changing this.

I think I need to buy a new TV soon. So now that’s a new phone and a new flat panel. Man oh man - I have to stop visiting Best Buy for a while.