Wirelessnorth.ca

We here at WirelessNorth are super stoked to be partnering with Interactive Ontario to bring you a brand new event, the iP3 Forum in Toronto this June.

Toronto iP3 Forum — a one-day event that will explore the changing mobile landscape and the business opportunities associated with Apple’s Touch Platform (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch), as business models adapt to a market where people are always connected.

The forum will feature keynote presentations by industry leaders as well as concurrent technical and business sessions throughout the day. Technical Sessions will provide a deeper understanding of how to design and develop for Apple’s Touch Platform. Business Sessions will offer information and insights on how to leverage the Platform’s market potential. The day will conclude with a networking reception.

More info to come, but for now head to Interactive Ontario for the goods.

Link: More info, program, registration, speaker applications here

The good news: You can touch the screen! And there’s apparently a browser that works, and something to do with a new media player. We’re expecting to see new hardware to go with it this June/July.

The bad: If you watch the promo vid it on mute you might be mistaken for thinking the new OS gives you a bad case of the Parkinsons.

The biggest news? The real digital divide in Canada is between generations. It turns out the best predictor of how much you use your phone and how well you use it is how old you are. And much more.

It’s a good read, get the full report here: Managing the Hype – The Reality of Mobile in Canada

Or is that the writing on the wall. RIM has an OS platform that drastically needs to modernize. From a towering duct-taped-up collection Java apps perched on a collection of a radio stacks, to a bulletproof embedded OS kernel. We think this bodes well. Go RIM.

From Alec Saunders:

News is out this morning that Harman International has agreed to sell it’s QNX Software Systems division to Research In Motion. TechCrunch speculates that this might mean tighter integration with automobiles, since Harman acquired QNX in order to provide software to its automotive customer base. RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis himself hypes up the automotive possibilities in the release.

I’m not buying it.

For those who don’t know QNX, it’s a micro-kernel based operating system with a sophisticated graphical user interface, a modern POSIX-based tool-chain, and a fully distributable architecture. In layman’s terms, that means it’s more stable than LINUX, runs in less memory than any of LINUX, OS X, or Windows – even the embedded versions, pretty to look at for users, and easy to develop software for using skills that are relatively common in the industry. Oh, and did I mention that it sports a touch screen UI, and a fully integrated flash development environment?

And if some useful automotive applications come along for the ride, we guess that’s fine too.

LINK: RIM bought QNX because of Apple

PWC has launched a project we heartily endorse, an open call for opinions on Canada’s digital future. Winners may even win a ticket to Canada 3.0 to be held again this year in exotic… Stratford Ontario. In any case, we strongly encourage you to have at it.

Give ‘em hell.

here’s the deets:

Canada’s Digital Compass will draw a community of Canadians who are passionate about digital transformation to submit and vote on ideas that could help position Canada to lead the digital economy. Weekly competitions will take place on five topic areas and winners from each competition will participate in a final showdown on May 4, 2010 where the top three ideas will be chosen. The three winners will be awarded tickets to the Canada 3.0 conference at the University of Waterloo on May 10-11, 2010 where their submissions could be presented to attendees.

Link: PWC Digital Compass

Koodo, the garish-colored discount flogger of Telus’ cheap hand-me-down “feature” phones, just got even cheaper. According to MobileSyrup Koodo cut prices on all their entire lineup from $25 to $50. We may not like the ads, but around here, we do give Koodo credit for the lowest entry-prices for cellular services and their reasonably innovative “tab”. The tab works a bit like Fido dollars in reverse, get the phone in your hand now, and rent to own it through your plan.

But sadly, great phones these are not. The price cut could be sign of competition heating up in the low end (thanks Wind) or it could be a sign of something better. Last decade’s crap talk-and-text-CDMA have got to go. Koodo has yet to launch any HSPA devices, let’s hope this cut is them taking out the trash in preparation for launching something better.

The mobile industry needs right now more creative financing options for making smart(er) phones financially accessible to a greater number of Canadians.

Over on the Tyee.ca Steve Anderson makes a few good points:

In last week’s speech from the throne and release of the budget, the government had an opportunity to address digital issues. All that was made clear, however, was that government is committed to opening Canada’s telecommunications and satellite industries to foreign ownership. Giving up on our capacity to meet this challenge and instead relying primarily on foreign investment schemes is not the answer. Such an approach would, at best, miss the lessons learned from the countries that are leading in broadband speed, access and cost.

Link: Why Are Tories Giving up on Canadian Innovation?

[ see also: Canada Needs a Serious Agenda for Media Innovation ]

In markets like the UK, foreign-ownership of carriers has been consistent with a high level of industry competitiveness and mobile innovation. However elsewhere like New Zealand the case is not as clear.

In the wired world, the models that work for driving advanced broadband typically have involved significant investment at the national or municipal level, effectively fibre to the curb as a fundamental public-good infrastructure service like gas, water, or roads with private ISPs servicing and marketing the last “mile” to households. Of course wireless couldn’t be more different. Tower-sharing and in-territory roaming requirements are a step in the right direction of reducing total infrastructure costs. However, instead of otherwise lowering barriers to entry the government seems to set up spectrum auctions as a way to take billions out of ICT investment rather than put it in.

Canada will be joining the ranks of nearly every other country on the planet (save Cuba, any others?) to allow foreign ownership of Canadian telecom companies. Even North Korea recently allowed foreigners to build out a mobile network there. Coincidentally, that was Orascom, the same wolf-in-Wind’s clothing that effectively broke through the regulation here in Canada.

The good news is that the Government is belatedly doing the right thing. They’ve recognized that their policy aims for stimulating industry competition are at odds with the facts on the ground, and at odds with Canada’s antiquated (pre-internet, pre-mobile phone industry) Telecom Act.

One might argue they should have done this before the 2008 spectrum auction. Thereby the feds could have given all the new entrants as well as the incumbents a more fair and level playing field for raising capital. Boy are some still bitter about that.

But not to worry, there’s still the big 700Mhz spectrum auction to come. That’s the real good stuff. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s also a yawning government deficit for which some of that foreign capital may slot in just nicely.

By the way, if you think that all this extracting billions from the telco industry by spectrum auctions will ultimately lower your wireless bill, you may in fact be dreaming.

But whatever, bring on the foreigners. Giddy-up, this business is gonna get interesting.

Tony’s stock options just went way up. So did Dave’s. Those next capital calls are looking much easier now.

On the other side, look for Vodaphone or t-mobile to buy Bell/Telus by sometime tomorrow.

LINK: Canada may consider foreign control of telecoms

Last week we had the pleasure to be in the audience of his googness^* Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. We found him there right in the very heart of darkness, the annual World Mobile Congress in rainy Barcelona. MWC itself was a fantastic clash of cultures between the stalwarts of each the PC and telcom worlds. Many of the latter you could see were distinctly concerned that the mobile industry is having less and less each year to do with this idea we used to call “telecom”. then into this heady environment walked Eric CEO of that great disruptor of worlds and flattener of industries, Google of Mountainview california. In the words of a red-colored Canadian wireless executive “google, love em, but we really can’t trust those guys”.

Here’s what Eric had to say:

The cloud + mobile is like having a million computers in your hand.

But all this potential of mobile means nothing without OPEN

This [the mobile industry, this conference] is the place to be for the PC industry, mobile web adoption is moving 8x faster than web adoption 10 years ago.

Indonesia, south Africa today have more mobile than web google searches. The rest of the world will be there soon.

Eric is here to thank the ecosystem the people who build the network. Your work is indispensable we can’t do anything without you. [But the tacit assumption google will now take all your base home with them].

Networks are now a way to instrument the world, what people are doing, what is going on .. if we want to and if users want us to. [being very careful to tread softly around previous privacy foot-in-mouth]

The cloud. The sim can now be used as an identifier for very sophisticated data in the cloud. With apps in cloud is all about sharing and replications. Not about local copies. A device that is not connected is lonely, it doesn’t do anything, it’s not interesting.

Why the phone? because it’s the high volume endpoint

New change at google is google-first. Not an intentional policy, but realizing that google is building the mobile apps first then making a web application. Mobile is google’s new default platform.

Cloud-based apps: An app that diagnoses your cough. Talking on phone to someone who doesn’t speak your language. Google googles snap a picture of museum, it identifies the museum tells you what’s in it and when it’s open.

[Your editor's epiphany: This is fully augmented reality! but not heads-up or heads down AR, this is "gopher AR" it's not about being immersed in the cloud all the time, it's about being immersed in the cloud any time. We don't need full time goggles, full time visual AR Layar-type experience, the killer apps may simply be those that let you "gopher" sticking your head up from the physical world to the cloud at any time]

Google is going to fight apple with flash. For google the killer app is flash games. Runs on hw acceleration
Taps in to existing flash games content. New adroids will run existing base (e.g. newgrounds) of flash games, giving google a games ecosystem right out of the box.

Google to carriers: we’re your friends honest! Want carriers to make money.

Google we need everyone to make money, we need the network, we are not going to provide infrastructure, we’re not optimized for that. Fixed gigabit project we announced is an rfp a test to share the learnings back with the industry [Now watch them turn voice and video into a universal free service outside the carrier, oops?]

^{*El Googerino? (maybe if you’re not in to the whole brevity thing)}