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Series 60 Challenge 2005 Awards

The following are the winners of the Series 60 Challenge Award which was launched last year to identify compelling Series 60 innovations.  More

- Best operator service - Map@Handset from China Mobile Communications Corporation, China:  Map@Handset is a location-based service that uses a pre-installed electronic map client with which users can search business and location information. In this localized operator-offered service, users can define their own interest points and send the interest points' map information through MMS to their colleagues and friends. The features of the service are very well designed, including both cell identification and GPS, landmarks, and eagle eye features.

- Best enterprise application - Quick Office Premier from Mobile Digital Media, United States: Quick Office Premier is the first mobile office suite to allow people to open, read, create, edit and save Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly on a Series 60-based device. While on the go, users can receive the MS files on their mobile via Bluetooth connection with compatible PC or handheld device, infrared beaming, SD/MMC memory card or via email attachment. Quick Office Premier is a very good, robust product and unique in the sense that everything is packaged in one package.

- Best media/music application - PhotoTwister from Scalado, Sweden: PhotoTwister creates twisted warp photos in a flash. PhotoTwister enables users to capture, save and send images that have been distorted by different warp or paint effects. PhotoTwister provides a new innovative way to warp photos in real time - before capturing.  The graphics and icons of the application are very clear and snappy.

- Best gaming application - Marble Revolution from bit-side, Germany: Marble Revolution brings the idea of a real tabelet game with a labyrinth back to a mobile phone using camera tracking. This great game makes good use of the phone's existing features, including an innovative and brilliant way to use the camera functionality in the Series 60-based device.

- Special prize - Mobile Cinema Booking from KeyTechnology, Italy: Mobile Cinema Booking is a client-server application that allows the user to book cinema tickets using a Series 60-based device. The application is customized for a multiplex cinema. Via a clear user interface, it enables e.g. searching movie information and choosing seats. The user receives an alphanumeric or barcode booking code to get the printed tickets at the theater.

Vodafone Italy offers Disney Content

Vodafone Italy is offering pictures Disney and Looney Tunes characters to be sent as MMS as well as real music Disney cartoon soundtracks. More here.

Related:

: Walt Disney India recently launched two TV channels - Disney Channel and Toon Disney in the Indian market and plans to offer wallpapers, ringtones and mobile games in the next few months.

Cricket launches voice activated ringtone

Subscribers of Cricket Clicks data service can now search for and purchase ringtones using a voice interface. Regarding pricing you select one of the three credit packages available - 1 credit (song) for $2.99, 3 credits for $8.49, or 5 credits for $12.99. Upon selecting the credit package, the user can then simply say the name of the artist and immediately get back a variety of ringtones to preview and download.

Yet another mobile content aggregator

Y&M Wireless Solutions launches TotallyCoolRingtones.com where you can download latest ringtones, wall paper images and mobile games.  The content is provided by Mediaplazza. The company plans to develop premium content with independent artists, record labels and publishers and offer mobile entertainment content such as music, video, mobile games, 1min TV episodes and movie trailers.

Mobile Music News II

: Guardian on the rise of the ringtone market with label-loving teens leading the growth.

: Egami Media enters the video ringtone market in Japan and South East Asia by exploring the signing of a non-exclusive agreement with Foreal.

: From Mark Frauenfelder:

The more exciting news is that Nokia vice-president Lee Epting says that she wants to encourage people "making ringtones, icons and other content and giving it out free to other users."

: Just as the Academy awards drive fans to movie theatres, the Grammy Awards are doing the same for the ringtone industry. Ringtone providers are bracing themselves for additional sales when artists win Grammys next week. More here.

: Boost Mobile's "Anthem 05" ringtone featuring Kanye West, Ludacris and The Game has raised over $65,000 to benefit The United Negro College Fund, The Ludacris Foundation and Chicago State University Foundation. More here.

: Music to the bottom line

: Mike Masnick on the ringtone market imbalance

: A generation after the birth of portable tunes on the Walkman, technology has made music available nearly everywhere for today's on-the-go consumer - and the recording industry sees a new wave to ride. More here.

: VeriSign’s new business in selling silly songs to mobile phone users is gathering all the attention at the moment. More here.

: Preferred Voice announces “Meet the Fockers” ringback tone service with Versaly Entertainment.

: Ingrooves launches mobile-only music label including exclusive and custom ringtone content.

: SDC announces new standards based DRM solution for Mobile Music

: From 3G Portal:

Leading the mobile music revolution are the technically superior 3G handsets and phone networks that are starting to be spread around the world. Technologically-savvy Asia is leading the way but the market is starting to take off in Europe and will start to be rolled out in Australia and New Zealand shortly.

: Ericsson unlocks mobile media potential at MIDEM:

"M-USE, the mobile music service developed by Ericsson in cooperation with the music industry. M-USE delivers to consumers personalized mobile music content such as music-clips, ring-tones, artist pictures, full length songs, video-clips, recommendations, music news and much more. Other services will be shown like personal greetings, as well as music-video streaming and Ericsson's payment solution IPX."

: Plugging the gaps in Mobile Music Market - Although record labels seem to be embracing and supporting the mobile music market, they still have a lot of doubts and concerns. Normally, the Internet can provide some guidance as to what may or may not work in the mobile industry, but for the record labels, the lessons from the Internet are still far from clear.

: 80s pop stars are also getting into the ringtone market by composing their own tunes. More here.

: Porn Star Jenna Jameson teams up with Wicked Wireless to provide music, R-Rated wall paper and her own branded of ringtones (Moantones) to cell phone subscribers in Central and South America. More here and here.

: Chaoticom to supply EMI Music songs to its European carrier partners such as Orange (United Kingdom), Telenor (Norway), Eurotel (Czech Republic), Pannon (Hungary).

: Business Week on how US operators, without much needed expertise, want to build mobile music services by themselves, instead of partnering with mobile music service providers. More here:

"Musiwave, a startup based in Paris, provides mobile music services to such carriers as Europe's Vodafone, France Telecom's Orange unit, and Spain's Telefonica. The privately held outfit hasn't signed up any customers in the U.S. "We find the wireless business model in the U.S. very unusual," says founder and Chairman Gilles Babinet. "Wireless carriers in the U.S. want to do everything for themselves. But they don't have the expertise to run a music business, which is why we tell them they would be better off -- and make more money -- working with a company like Musiwave."

The wireless industry's business model in Europe is similar to the pioneering road paved by DoCoMo in Japan. The latter opens its wireless networks to thousands of entertainment and news companies, which pay a small percentage of their revenue to DoCoMo, Babinet says.

That business model is slow to take off in the U.S., especially when it comes to music. Wireless carriers fear that their brand will be overshadowed by entertainment providers, relegating cellular service to commodity status. Their fears aren't baseless, although that dire scenario isn't inevitable, Baca says."

: From Ringtonia:

"Buongiorno Vitaminic launches Video Ringtones for Valentines Day, as a romantic alternative to the gifts of chocolates, flowers. Video Ringtones is a high quality mobile phone truetone with a short video clip, matching images and tracks with the personality of the person for whom it is intended. Senders can choose from a wide range of offerings, ranging from romantic ballads to hip-hop, available via Buongiorno‚s extensive catalogue of titles."

Mimicking service...

Did you ever wish you could hide your location when talking on the phone? Ever wanted to give the impression you were somewhere else? Lightway for PalmOne Treo smartphones has a feature called "CoverUp Sound" where you can trigger sounds to play in the phone conversation.

I hear that this application is popular in Japan with cheating "salary men" husbands. They'll trigger sounds of a train station, a busy office or a bar, while explaining to their wives why they won't be home until later. Single men trigger the sound of a girl in the background saying "come back to bed" to make their male friends jealous.

I use it to insert a bad connection effect: "I can't hear you, you're breaking up on me, I'm losing signal, I'll have to call you back about that. Kshhhh."

More from Boing Boing:

: In related news -- last week, San Francisco-based Phonebites nabbed a US$3MM venture round. They, too, offer a service that allows mobile phone users to insert a pre-recorded sound clip into a live conversation - like a radio soundboard, but for your cell phone. Here's a related Engadget post from last October: Link

: CallCheater - Series 60 Application

You can also buy the SounderCover product which gives you the ability to add a background sound to any incoming or outgoing call, giving the impression that you really are in the environment where the background sound is normally heard.  More here.

Telstra concerned on ringback tone market

Are Australians less enthusiastic about ringback tone services? Telstra certainly think so and is still weighing up plans...

Ringbacks have proved particularly popular in Asia, and the Arc Group estimates total global annual ringback sales at more than AU$4 billion. However, it may be a while before Australian mobile users enjoy such a service, despite the popularity of other customisation services such as ring tones, wallpapers and games.

"We're certainly investigating what ringback tones would mean for Telstra," said general manager for wireless consumer data services Graham Gordon. However, Gordon argues that cultural differences between Australia and other countries in the region might mean ringbacks aren't a guaranteed smash.

"Their popularity will certainly be strong, but I'm a bit reticent to launch into it just yet," he said. Because they use original recordings, ringbacks have higher licence fees, and those are more easy to monetise in markets with a larger population, Gordon noted.

Gordon's comments echo a recent report from Ovum which noted that Western consumers may not have the same enthusiasm for ringbacks that Asian countries have shown. "The ringback tone service is difficult to explain and market," the report noted.

More on ringback tone services:

: KDDI to offer ringback tone service

: Meet the Fockers mobile content

: Beijing Linkhead Technologies launches Color ringback tone services for China Unicom –

: There is a strong demand of ringback tone services in India with AirTel's Hello Tune service reaching 1M subscribers and that within 5 months of service launch.

: Ringback Tone services

PurpleAce launches 3GSM ringtone competition

PurpleAce a pioneer of mobile content discovery solutions plans to showcase it's Ripple Discover product by launching a ringtone competition, hoping to set a record for virally spreading mobile content. Ripple Discover enables subscribers to pass on their purchases to friends (in a copyright protected environment), resulting in purchases "snowballing". More here:

The PurpleAce 3GSM Points Mean Prizes Competition gives loyalty points to those who share a specially prepared 3GSM ringtone, which is distributed to people registered on its website www.purpleace.com. The competition will culminate with the person with the most points receiving a prize on the final day of this year's industry showpiece event in Cannes.

Once recipients have the ringtone, which represents a first for the 3GSM exhibition, they can forward it to friends to accumulate points. They'll also be able to access the online PurpleAce 3GSM Points Mean Prizes leader board to get a real-time glimpse of how they're doing in the competition. Whoever has the most points at the end of the show, and has validated their entry at the PurpleAce stand, will win a crate of fine French wine, which will be sent to wherever they chose.

PurpleAce CEO Scott Sproule said: "This 'live' viral marketing display will demonstrate the power of our Ripple products, which are based on man's inherent social need to share. We're planning to set a record for the highest number of recommendations for a single ringtone with this demonstration. Ripple gives operators and content providers a way to differentiate their offerings and add a real increase in revenues."

The PurpleAce 3GSM Points Mean Prizes Competition is based on the company's Ripple Discover product, which gives loyalty points to users whose recommendations of mobile content (such as photos, ringtones or videos) result in a purchase. These points can be exchanged for further mobile content. Ripple Discover also identifies and recommends new mobile content based on a customer's past purchases.

Crazy Frog ringtone

From BBC:

Adverts for the Crazy Frog mobile phone ringtone have played hundreds of times on certain TV channels over the past few weeks; it has earned an estimated £10m, and according to the company selling it, is the most successful ringtone in the world. Now a dance mix has been recorded and played on Chris Moyles's Radio 1 breakfast show.

The frog is irritating to the point of distraction and back again. And yet at the same time, it's strangely compelling.

Australia's Triple J radio network goes mobile

ABC's youth radio network, Triple J plans to offer 3G mobile music audio and video content to major mobile operators in Australia. The radio network seems tech savvy and recently started offering podcasting services to its subscribers.