Global

FinnMob (Finnish Mobile Association) and IMA (Israel Mobile and Communications Association) have agreed to jointly promote their portfolio companies. The associations reprepresent over 200 companies operating in the mobile industry, and aim to offer faster access by global operators, handset and network vendors, and investors to mobile products developed in Finland and Israel.

“We are very excited about the synergies offered by this alliance,” said Ismo Rantala, FinnMob’s managing director. “We have been using mobile services for over 25 years in Finland, and we have gained valuable insights to what consumers want. The research and development teams of our portfolio companies have these insights ingrained in them.”

The alliance will present their portfolio companies at the major mobile industry events, starting at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Spain.

French digital security firm Gemalto has bought the Finnish mobile authentication firm Valimo Wireless. The companies did not disclose the terms of the transaction. The acquisition provides Gemalto a position in the growing mobile financial services market.

Mobile operators use Valimo’s software to authenticate financial transactions made through mobile phones. The software is installed in mobile phone SIM cards. Valimo turned profitable last year, and had annual net sales of about 3 million euros.

The App Store has changed mobile. It’s simply the most accessible and lucrative market place for developers to sell their apps. However, with over 140,000 apps there are real challenges of discovery and customer acquisition.
Mobile Monday Silicon Valley is here to help by rounding up a series of companies who are addressing […]

:: 6.30pm for 7pm start, Mon 1st February 2010
:: Note: New Venue is Level 1, The City Hotel (www.cityhotel.com.au)
:: Entry on King Street corner Kent Street.

We’ve survived the GFC!
It’s 2010!  We survived the noughties and more importantly the GFC.  Though we may bear the battle scars of 2009, it’s onwards and upwards for the mobile industry. […]

It is quite clear that many people have either a love or hate relationship with the Apple. The Cupertino, California-based brand announced its new iPad tablet device earlier today, and I think there are more lovers than haters at the moment.
It is sleek, it is stylish, it has the expected cool factor. Yes, it looks […]

Hi-
Randy Giusto here! I’ll be liveblogging today’s Apple Event here. The event’s set for 1:00 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT/6:00 p.m. GMT. My tweet stream will flow into this post as I curate the event (sorry, we couldn’t get TwitterLiveBlog to work w/the latest Wordpress upgrade). It will also flow to my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter pages […]

The Mobile Premier Awards announces the 20 finalists to the Mobile Premier Awards in Innovation: The best grassroots startup innovation chosen by their peers in partnership with MobileMonday, the global community of mobile professionals.
The finalists were chosen by an international jury of the most recognized mobile industry experts who will pitch their idea, application or […]

Remote radioheads will a billion dollar market in five years, predicts a new study from ABI Research. According to the merket research company the demands of cost reduction and greater efficiency in cellular base station design are leading to a rapidly growing market for remote radio heads. Cellular base stations are now undergoing a design revolution; the trend is towards “distributed base stations” in which the RF portion (along with suitable processing and an optical interface) is placed into a weatherproof box mounted on the tower near the antennas. This is the remote radio head. Remote radio heads are also …

Finland-based Tieto today announced that it has provided consulting services for China Mobile’s online application store called Mobile Market. The delivery includes the technical solution regarding how to encapsulate China Mobile’s network-end capabilities into the Symbian/S60 client-end and a demo that verifies its feasibility. The solution forms a base for China Mobile to further explore the development of its proprietary Software Development Kit. The deal is a significant opening for Tieto into the Chinese marketplace, and it further strengthens the company’s position as a major services and software partner in the Symbian Foundation. This project has required a deep understanding …

There were more than 450 million mobile Internet users worldwide in 2009, a number that is expected to more than double by the end of 2013. Driven by the popularity and affordability of mobile phones, smartphones, and other wireless devices, IDC‘s Worldwide Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast expects the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet to surpass the one billion mark over the next four years. “The number of mobile devices with Internet access has simply exploded over the last several years,” said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC. “With a wealth of information and services available from …