• Windows Marketplace will have about 600 certified applications immediately available for the Web site’s upcoming launch, said Microsoft France's product manager for Windows Mobile, Audrey Zolghadr, in a recent interview with MobiFrance. The Palm Pre’s App Catalog launched with an anemic number of applications while Nokia’s Ovi Store is still flushing out its selection of apps, though the store boasts of host of items like ringtones and wall paper. The iPhone’s App Store currently has about 20,000 applications.
• Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has completed a network rollout for Vodafone in seven new regions in India, the world’s fastest-growing telecom market. The rollout took just 10 months after its start in 2008 and the expansion is expected to continue until 2010. The network contract made the company Vodafone’s largest network implementation partner in India, with over 80 percent of Vodafone’s subscriber traffic routed over NSN infrastructure.
• CNN appointed Louis Gump vice president of its mobile business. Gump previously headed the Weather Channel Interactive and has served on the Mobile Marketing Association board of directors since 2003. The Weather Channel Interactive named Cameron Clayton as vice president of the company’s mobile product portfolio, which includes the channel’s mobile Web site, multimedia and messaging offerings and an application for the iPhone and iPod touch. Clayton recently served as the company’s director of business development, where his work resulted in the widespread availability of Weather Channel products and content, including mobile downloads and multimedia offerings.
• The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) named its 2009-2010 Regional Officers and Global Board of Directors and Officers. The Regional Boards have representation from member companies across each of the Regions MMA has operations in: Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. The Global Board will be chaired by Federico Pisani Massamormile and will be supported by Global Vice-Chairperson Michael Becker, with Mike Wehrs, MMA president and CEO, and Russell Buckley, Global Chairperson Emeritus, rounding out the Global Board of Directors.
• T-Mobile USA announced the debut of Green Perks, a new mobile application that offers exclusive discounts on environmentally conscious products and services. Available for download to many current T-Mobile handsets, the free application brings customers green-oriented offers and promotions from T-Mobile Green Perks partners, including Method, Jamba Juice, Volcom, Roxy and Quiksilver. The new promotional program is designed to reward consumers who make environmentally responsible purchasing decisions.
• Fujitsu Microelectronics has licensed Red Bend Software’s device management software for its WiMAX chipsets. Under the agreement, Fujitsu has pre-integrated Red Bend’s device management software in its WiMAX SoC and chipset platform. The software is interoperable with device management servers that use standards created by the Open Mobile Alliance. Fujitsu is a founding member and current board member of the WiMAX Forum.
• Genoa Color Technologies has announced a color technology that reduces power consumption in phone displays by about 40 percent. The technology, called Pixcale, augments standard RGB (red, green, blue) displays with cyan and yellow. Genoa claims that the additional colors boost the brightness efficiency of the display, thereby offering a 35 percent to 50 percent backlight power savings in display modules. Display modules consume a significant portion of the typical smartphone battery power, and the company claims its technology can also extend battery life.
• CSR and SiRF Technology Holdings have completed their merger, bringing the group into the world’s top 10 list of fabless semiconductor companies. The combined firms say that they now supply six of the top seven handset manufacturers. Aside from a boost in market share, the merger also allows the firms to branch out into a wider array of devices including handsets, netbooks and mobile Internet devices.
• iPCS has begun offering push-to-talk service on phones using Qualcomm’s Q-Chat technology in Saginaw, Mich. The service, first offered last fall in the company’s largest market of Grand Rapids, Mich., allows customers to make push-to-talk calls using the CDMA network.
• Bitstream announced the availability of its update to BOLT, the company’s Web browser for mobile phones. New features include the ability to copy and paste text from Web pages, enhanced font rendering, inline entry of text into online forms and support for languages using Cyrillic alphabets.