Another busy day at the modu hospitality suite and booth.

Highlights from the last 2 days

An interesting announcement:

modu and JBL team up to give high-fidelity music to mobile phone consumers with the first modu music  jacket

Dov spoke on Tuesday at one of the MWC sessions: “The new device Marketplace”  where the title of his PPT was: Device for all seasons – a modular approach to creating the ideal device:

Benny spoke at the GSMA 2009 Mobile Innovation Global Competition were we competed against 6 other finalists.  A company called, Cootekwon the championship title.  They developed a product called TouchPal which is a soft keyboard that provides better user experience in touchscreen mobile devices.

Show at MWC is now officially open and we wanted to share with you pictures from the Fira as well as other updates:

2 mains Press releases:

Telefonica- modu and Telefonica enter into pilot of modular mobile phones in Latin America

http://www.modumobile.com/#/press_release/item_198/

Lynk Communications- modu secures  $38.5 million initial order to bring its mobile phone ecosystem to Southeast Asia

http://www.modumobile.com/#/press_release/item_199/

Some pictures from the show:

 Thanks to our official photographer Lior LubraniJ

Our earth hosts 7 billion people and 3.8 billion active mobile phones.  Most of us upgrade our device every couple of years.  Each of us engages in a different personal relationship with our handheld. 

My parents regard it as a phone they carry in their pocket, plain and simple.  My co-workers write messages on their mobile device, and use it to manage their calendars. I use it to read the news. Generation Y and cultures in the Far East use it heavily for rich media, music, games, digital payments, infotainment and entertainment.  We can only begin to imagine how Generation Z will integrate the telecom gadgets of the future into their lives. 

Together with you, every month or two I will use this blog as a platform to explore global, local and glocal trends in the mobile space. 

We will take a look at various aspects of cell phone usage, including:

·         Countries and People: Cell phones in much of the West have penetrated over 100% of potential users.  Less developed locales often rely on mobile networks more than land lines, adding millions of new cellular subscribers monthly.  The average age of people using mobile devices decreases daily.  Who and where are the end users?  How are they changing?

·         Cell Phones and Mobile Media: Is the mobile phone on its way to becoming our personal television set?  Will advertisers soon recognize the mobile phone as the next Internet?

·         Cell Phones and Entertainment:  Music, movies, books, news items, games, social interaction, hospitality and sports.    How can the mobile phone further enhance the way we inform and entertain ourselves, and enjoy leisurely activities? 

·         Cell Phones and Transportation:  Can your cell phone drive your car?  Manage your use of public transportation?  Encourage you to walk? Tell you where to go?

 ·         Cell Phones and Electronic Payments:  Will I be able to leave my wallet at home, empty, and migrate my plastic cards to my phone?  Will I use it to pay merchants and peers, withdraw money from an ATM, conduct my personal business?  Will I receive shopping incentives on this electronic wallet?

·         Cell Phones and Personalized Software:  Some mobile platforms already allow users to choose from thousands of software applications.  How far will that go?  

·         Cell Phones and Personalized Hardware:  Will the trend towards personalized software extend to the shape, look, feel and hardware specs of each person’s device?  Like genomics, which seek to customize medicines to each patient’s genetic code, will mobile phone manufacturers do the same to suit their end users’ preferences?

·         Cell Phones and Human Behavior:  Will the features in your phone change the way you go about your life?  And how will your daily habits impact the design of cell phones of the future?

·        Cell Phones and Humanity:  Can mobile phones fight world poverty?  Some people think so.  And how can we minimize their harm to our environment?

 ·         Cell Phones and Ice Cream:  Can our mobile phone feed us ice cream?  Or replace our schools?  Or decide how to furnish our houses?  What outrageous concepts, currently unfathomable, could become the cell phone feature of the day a few short years from now?

·         Cell Phones and Medicine:  Will you carry your medical records in your phone?

·         Making Money: On each of these topics, can mobile network operators and device manufacturers deliver enough value to end users to create sustainable, profitable business models? 

Discover new directions in the mobile world.  Share your thoughts.  Perhaps we can start a new mobile trend or two of our own. 

Oded Salomy

Director of Corporate Development, modu^TM

To receive email updates about my future blog posts, write me below with your email address.  We will not publish your email address.

In the world of personalization of applications and content, modu is presenting a different paradigm where each and every user can select one’s own device according to the preferences, the activity or the life style.

modu platform enables partners from other arenas to enter the mobile world; using the core modu phone inside a consumer electronic device enabling mobile services, personal content and connectivity.

One thing that never ceases to interest me is people. You can almost never have enough of watching people, and you literally spend a lifetime understanding them. People are the main asset of every organization (commercial or not), and not in vain modu had made it to be its top value: “People first”. In my essays I will try to give you a glimpse into the everyday life within our corridors; to share with you my point of view in the experience of being part of the group that forms modu.

Being a part of the hi-tech industry can be quite demanding and time consuming, especially in case of a start-up. Nonetheless, every now and then you may encounter someone who nurtures an alter ego: a side vocation that helps one keep his soul vivid. Sometimes I can’t help wondering which ego is alternative, and which is really the primal one. Let me get you acquainted with such a person: a QA group manager who’s also the leader of a rock band.

195dB is the name, and good hard rock music in Hebrew is its game (in case you wonder about the nature of this name, try to find out how to measure such a valueJ). Along with their hopefully soon to publish debut album, the band’s two guitarists, bass player and drummer, would soon celebrate their fifth year of playing together. Two weeks ago, on the second evening of Hanukah, was a night of a very special show. This was the band’s first concert to be played in the format of the upcoming album. Many friends have gathered in Tmoona Theater in Tel Aviv, to show support and to experience a less familiar side of someone they know daily, as a colleague.

As the lights went off, the guys took their places on the stage, and the fun began. The show went very good, and great music sprung out of the amplifiers, enthusing the audience. The dim space became full with flickering lights and colorful sounds. I can’t write so you’d feel as if you were there, but the photos attached (taken by yours truly) are sure to give you a taste of that night’s excitement. The next day, our rock star came back to be the same ol’ Tal, the guy from the QA, who keeps a Gibson in the closet. Take a look around. It might be fun to meet the alter ego of someone you know for ages, from across the hall.

One last thing: as a people, we’re going through rough times, these days, and I wish us all to come through them, to live a saner future.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading what I had to tell you.

See you all next time,

Shalom.

More information about 195dB and a clip from the show can be found in: http://www.myspace.com/195db.

Not the one you are thinking of! In the last few days all of modu employees are playing with the fabulous modu device and looking for final bugs. Everyone at the company is trying to find that one killer bug that might cause the unthinkable. These days our QA team is working around the clock to find bugs and the software and hardware teams are working to kill those. There are big countdown signs spread around the company that has the release date on them and every day another page is torn.

2 articles in the Israeli news paper Yedioth Aharonoth and an interview on the Israeli channel 10 morning show.
See the video of the morning show interview

http://boker.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=604774&pid=48&typeid=1

So we all know it. We all know that modu is an amazing concept. I am on a call, entering the phone to my PC and the call switches to the PC. I take the phone out and enter it to my jacket of choice. I get into the car and the modu which holds my contacts, songs and other data becomes my hands free phone and music player in the car while charging.
Again, great concept but technically, how do you build the lightest phone in the world (Checkout Guinness Record)? Why not everybody just build it? What do you have to do in-order to keep the call live while switch from my office jacket to my running jacket? How do you handle different screen sizes between the jackets? How does the software on the phone reflects different moods when I switch jackets? Where is the antenna? The battery(s)?  how do you dial with modu buttons, 12 keys and a QWERTY? How do you support different cameras? Where are the drivers for the cameras? How do you separate what stays on the small modu unit vs. the jacket’s brain?
So many questions with answers we all deal with daily, trying to build something different.

Martin Cooper

Interestingly enough, Dr. Martin Cooper, Executive Chairman and Founder of ArrayComm, is considered the inventor of the mobile device. What’s even more interesting, is his recent keynote address at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, where he presented his view about the current wireless industry, and its’ main apparent failures.  I would like to focus on 2 of them.

First, mobile phones are still used 70% of the time today to talk and listen. Then for text messages (SMS) and way behind reside the e-mail and other applications which serve relatively tiny world segments. Still, we – as consumers – are constantly surrounded with marketing promotions urging us to purchase expensive high speed data services, which most of us hardly use.

Second, Cooper claims that convergence simply doesn’t make sense. Several highly-optimized devices, focused on specific functions / needs, are far better than cramming all of them into one single do-it-all device.  He himself, by the way, uses a Jitterbug phone – one of the simplest mobile phones today, which is targeted for seniors, offerings big keys, no menus and only incoming & outgoing calls.

Sounds familiar?… J

It seems that the concept of “divide and conquer”, or in other words – identifying different users’ needs, goals and contexts of use, and tailoring the optimal solution & experience to fit them, is starting to sink in.

Nokia N79

In fact, even Nokia, the undisputed ‘all-in-one’ industry leader, seems to start feeling the wind of change.  Their new N79 (AKA- clever chameleon) offers a nice visual feature – Changing the battery cover, automatically changes the display theme accordingly, to match the overall look & feel.  

This chameleon feature is still very far from modu’s vision (as also indicated in the article itself), but it does show first signs of challenging current perceptions.

And just to summarize, I would like to cite Dr. Cooper’s final comment at the conference: “the best technology is invisible”. I couldn’t agree more. Especially when it comes hand-in-hand with putting the spotlight on the users. us.

Hi All.
I was just added to the list of contributors to the modu blog.
In the comings posts, I will try to add more visibility into the technical aspects of the modu echo system.
I will try to post as much information as I can in order to prepare you for the arrival of the modu phone.
I hope to keep the conversation open as much as I can but I do need to keep some cards close to my chest.

My title at modu is Software Expert at the CTO office. I am in-charge of identifying new technologies that would be great to have in the modu phone, jackets and mates.

I will not discuss business issues like dates of deployment, operators or markets but I will entertain you with some insights to the user interface, applications and features.

Feel free to comment or email me directly at ran.margalit@modumobile.com