The press-release is below, but this is a true story of a  mobile music journalist to go Rock-Star!

I met Val Halla when she was doing some reporting for GoMo News for Canadian Music Week 2009.  It was the middle of the worst part of the economic storm, but Val was there to write about anything big and cool in the mobile music space that might be a spark of hope for the music industry….. I was so impressed by her, that we made her website mobile ( here is the blog-post back in March 09).   Since then I am no longer working with the Mobify team (  I do not think the site is still up), but I have a been a big believer as well that the “Mobile Moment” is a “Music and Venue Moment” tied to the anchor of an artist’s own mobile site…..where they can sell everything from content to unique goods at the Venue.

Not only have we kept close contact over the years and she has helped me in many ways with some of the Artists I have been involved with.

This is a proud day for us and the mobile marketing….music business and Val…. Good things happen to Good people… lets she if she goes mobile for this tour!

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Canadian Rocker Val Halla Recruited for 28 Dates on

Ted Nugent Tour After Texas Gig.

Saskatchewan Artist & Former Vancouver resident, Val Halla, will open up 28 dates of Ted Nugent’s “Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead Tour 2010” beginning June 16^th in Boston, and continuing through August 8^th in Wichita, KS.

Val Halla came to the attention of Nugent after performing a gig in Waco, Texas.  After hearing good things, Nugent asked Halla to sing on a demo for a song he was recording at a studio just outside of town.  Impressed by Halla, he called his management at Doc McGhee Entertainment (KISS, Darius Rucker), who then came out to see Halla perform in April in West Hollywood, CA.  Only two days later, Halla (who has served as her own manager & booking agent for the last 9 years) was asked to be the opening act on 28 dates of Nugent’s tour.

Halla is promoting her fourth album “No Place” which was just released in March 2010.  Her songwriting and guitar playing has won her coverage in both Guitar World Magazine, and Guitar Player Magazine and showcases this year at Canadian Music Week, SXSW, and the Florida Music Festival. The album features high profile players including Elliott Randall of Steely Dan, and Murray Pulver of Doc Walker.  A group of Austin, TX musicians will be backing Halla up on the Nugent tour.  The band is made up of three incredibly talented Berklee drop outs: guitarist Neal Davis, bassist Alex Ferreiro, and drummer Marty Higman.

To raise funds for tour support – Ted Nugent himself is signing “Texas flag” guitars that sponsors will receive for donating $500 or $1000, as well as other rewards packages for donations from $10 to $250 dollars. Val Halla has no record label to provide tour support, so this is a grass roots effort. Tour support is being raised through http://feedthemuse.net/valhalla

• Date                City/State                                           Venue
• June 16            Boston, MA                                        The House of Blues
• June 17            Providence, RI                                    Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel
• June 18            Hampton Beach, NH                           Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom
• June 19            Philadelphia. PA                                 Electric Factory
• June 20            New Haven, CT                                  Toad’s Place
• June 22            Clifton Park (Albany), NY                     Northern Lights
• June 23            Wantagh, NY                                      Mulcahy’s
• June 24             Jim Thorpe, PA                                  Penn’s Peak
• June 25             Fredericksburg, VA                            Celebrate Virginia Central Park
• June 26             North Myrtle Beach, SC                      The House of Blues
• June 27             Lake Buena Vista, FL (Orlando)          The House of Blues
• June 29             Fort Lauderdale, FL                            Revolution
• July 2              Fayetteville, AR                                   Arkansas Music Pavilion
• July 4              San Antonio, TX                                  Back Stage Live (Sunken Garden Theatre)
• July 5              Donna, TX                                          Donna Corn Maze Amphitheatre
• July 7              Ardmore, OK                                      Heritage Hall
• July 13             Fort Smith, AR                                   The Rib Room
• July 14             Nashville, TN                                     The Wildhorse Saloon
• July 18             Tulsa, OK                                          Cain’s ballroom
• July 20             Merrillville, IN                                     Star Plaza Theatre
• July 23             Clear Lake, IA                                    Surf Ballroom
• July 25             Sylvania, OH                                      Centennial Terrace
• July 27               Prestonburg, KY                                Mountain Arts Center
• July 28              Cleveland, OH                                   House Of Blues
• July 29             Columbus, OH                                   LC Outdoor Amphitheater
• July 30             Pittsburgh, PA                                   Amphitheatre at Station Square
• August 4          Chicago, IL                                        The House of Blues
• August 8          Park City (Whichita), KS                      Hartman Arena

For more information Contact Val Halla Music

at 615-573-5599 or info@valhallaonline.com

I guess you can say, it is about time! Kyocera launched at CTIA this last spring with their first entry into the America’s after waiting and seeing for many years…NT&T DoCoMo brought Android to the Japanese Market in April with the Sony Xperia and Softbank was soon to follow with their Android device.

From the walled gardens of the different marketplaces to the open platforms, the world has come alive for the cross-border opportunity again.  I am excited to see these high-end toys now entering the states to offer a unique variety to the same old stuff we have seen.  Japan was very strong in the consumer product space in the 80′s and early 90′s, but then it stopped. The re-emergence of the US industry in the consumer space with Palms, iPods and the flurry of electronics from the Korean’s and the Taiwanese seemed to be become the replacement.

So what will be different that will make us want to buy them?  It is not just a hardware game anymore, but a one-stop-shop for all kinds of services.  My feeling is that we will start to see followers to the Google-TV example that started with Sony for a complete array of interesting cross-media interactivity….. Will Hitachi bring back its household goods back with a twist on mobile:  Google-Refrigerator?  What about Casio and their cool G-shocks tied to the mobile device : Google-Watch? and even NEC  following Sony with the Google-TV series?  These are some of the areas where I think the Japanese can really accelerate the convergence of mobile and everything around us.

1) Cross-platform integration into the consumer electronics space

2) Unique uses of mobile wallet and integration between products

3) Cool, fun, innovative designs and market demo differentiation. Highest of High quality….

4) Enterprise products and services for small  and medium businesses

5) Access to the wonderful world of Japanese sourced content.

6) Unique integrations amoungst the Japanese suppliers themselves…. Wii?

7) Cross-Carrier cooperation ( i.e. JIL )

Deep rooted relationships between Japanese companies and Microsoft and Google

9) Heavy industry and mobile. ( Trains, Buses, Elevators, Escalators, Ticket machines all integrated to mobile)

10) ….. or just another Android, Windows mobile device?

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Techcrunch reported last year that NEC, Hitachi and Casio were in negotiations to merge their cell phone operations to become Japan’s second biggest manufacturer, following Sharp. And the new company, which is called NEC Casio Mobile Communications and was established on May 1, just yesterday announced ambitious expansion plans.

According to reports in various Japanese media, NEC Casio Mobile plans to ship a total of 12 million cell phones in fiscal 2012, up a whopping 60% of all handsets NEC, Hitachi and Casio together shipped in 2009 (the companies will merge their cell phone operations on June 1).

All of Japan’s eight (soon six) major cell phone makers are going through a slump currently, mainly due to a shrinking domestic market and rising development costs for advanced cell phones. In Japan, the new company wants to cooperate with all three national carriers (Docomo, KDDI au, and SoftBank Mobile).

In the US, NEC Casio Mobile is said to currently look into building business ties with Verizon and AT&T, according to reports. The company expects 4 million of those 12 million cell phones it plans to ship in 2012 to go to markets outside Japan.

This is another monumental release today. Mastercard announced its API to developers.  Carriers, mobile payment companies and online providers such as PayPal have all been driving toward the next generation of payment structures that would shape the mobile commerce world.  Japan has embraced bringing credit cards to mobile already in 2005, and now 5 years later we are seeing progress here in North America for this enabler that will lead to a seismic shift in how mobile and applications will evolve.  In the same breath, I saw a recruiting post for one of my favorite creative agencies CP+B looking for mobile developers.

This is the creative agency that rocked the world with some of the most disruptive CM’s such as ” The Kings Gone Crazy”, “Domino’s Pizza Crust has gone Cardboard” and many others….. and they represent American Express….

What is happening is that the media world is really shaping now around mobile. When the big creative agencies start to prioritize and the mobile commerce system is about to get in place are key indicators of all the different creative things we are going to see in not only the Top of the Funnel, but the Bottom of it as well.

Today was a very exciting day for me with mobile and the future of Brand Marketing and Commerce…

*************************************************************

In a press release this morning, MasterCard has announced that desktop and mobile developers will have access to an API from the credit card giant later this year. The company hopes that by opening its technology to developers, new and innovative e-commerce applications that leverage the MasterCard network will be created, potentially competing with the likes of Visa, PayPal and Square.

MasterCard Chief Innovation Officer Josh Peirez says the company is “excited about tapping into the ingenuity of software developers around the globe to help create the next generation of game-changing payment applications.” A newly launched portal – MasterCard Labs – will give developers access to APIs, SDKs, guides and forums for discussing and experimenting with the company’s technology.

The announcement comes at a time when the mobile-payments market has begun to heat up with competition between startups and large credit card providers. San Francisco-based startup Square has many people excited about its mobile application and dongle that allows credit cards to be scanned by various mobile devices; online payment staple PayPal recently teamed up with Bump Technologies to provide a mobile transaction service as well.

Visa also recently announced its own foray into the mobile payments market. Earlier this month, the MasterCard competitor teamed with DeviceFidelityto launch special cases for iPhones which would allow users to take advantage of Visa’s wireless and contact-less payment method, Visa payWave, straight from their phones.

But mobile payments is just one of the platforms MasterCard hopes developers will innovate on using its technology. The company says it has identified 20 other areas in which their APIs could be used, including payroll systems, social networking applications, eWallets, and online games. With the growing popularity of sites like Blippy, which allows users to automatically share their credit card purchases with their friends, MasterCard may be providing a valuable API to developers at a ripe moment for these kinds of platforms and services.

Many have been skeptical about these new services due to apparent security risks that come from mobile payment systems, but MasterCard is taking precautions to make sure their platform is not abused. According to its press release this morning, “all developers will be approved and registered by MasterCard to ensure that MasterCard payment and data services continue to be used appropriately and productively.”

Holiday Inn just launched a mobile solution for room keys going mobile.  I spent a considerable time today on Foursquare and although I have been overwhelmed by the grown, what I found disturbing was the lack of content for each of the places.  Companies like Yelp and other joined the bandwagon of “Check-in” but they come with considerable content. Unless the Foursquares of the world figure out a strategy to get users to post more tips and content, I just do not know how sustainable it will be.

With that said, the concept and leadership they created with the concept of “Check-in” and the database of places is clearly the next wave in location based services and mobile.  Seeing Holiday Inn take this initiative to further the entire process and build a complete engaging solution around the entire concept of ” Checking-in” without customers even going to the front desk is the usage case of mobile cross-media that is where mobile is powerful.

eCommerce and other conversion techniques exist for mobile, but the creativity of taking a brand and enabling a “full experience” that is truly convenient is where I like seeing mobile going.

At CTIA I stayed at the Hilton Hotel Convention center, and there were Foursquare banners all over the lobby to “Check-in”.  The vision was there as well and seeing Hotels and the travel industry now embracing mobile in its full form shows the power of the mobile device.

When I met the consumer reports team at the last CTIA, I enjoyed talking to them about the opportunities of bringing such a great brand to mobile.  Well they did, and here is the release of the ConsumerReports.org mobile strategy.

• Their focus is on the web, making the experience ubiquitous for all the different devices.
• You need to be a paid subscriber to ConsumerReports.org to get access to the publication, but  the key issue is that they did not raise there price for mobile. Any users that already have a subscription (~$29), also get mobile as part of the package.
• The product is perfect for on-the-go to see product ratings.

Here is the video of the product

With all the recent debate over fragmentation, it just made me look at this from an other angle. Could fragmentation be actually a good thing?  If we look at the mobile today there are about 4500 different devices that all have slightly different screen sizes and formats.  Even though they are all quite different when it comes to the device feature set, there is one area that is not fragmenting, but converging….  This has been around the browser.

With some of the recent advances in HTML5 and the lastest roadmap shared at the Google I/O conference, it makes one wonder if fragmentation was part of the master plan over at Google.  Let all the device manufacturers fight over there differences in features and functionality of the OS, but keep one thing consistent and moving forward…. the browser and the web.

With the release of Froyo ( Android 2.2), again there have been lots of complaints from partners like Sony-Ericsson and others.  However, what Google has shown is the convergence between online-mobile with the HTML5 feature set.

I am convinced that there is some kind of thinking and strategy around fragmentation driving users back to the browser and the growth of the Chrome Web-App storefront that will shortly converge with mobile.

Based on the latest stats on the  market share published by Gartner of the different device manufacturers and platforms, it is clear that Nokia, Apple and Google all have similar momentum and are growing quite steadily.  Today about 20+% of the entire market is based on Smartphones and it has been published that by 2012 more then 50% of the US  Market will be Smart phones.     From all the media, one would think that iPhone and Android would be overtaking Nokia and that Android would be overtaking Apple.   From the extrapolated data, the growth along the same line for the last year shows this is not the case.  Nokia, Apple and Google all seem to have similar growth paths.  As we do know there are more and more devices choosing Android as the platform, there is some strong momentum in the Android camp that is positive accelloration of device penetration.

With this all said, one of the biggest problems Nokia has is in its Market Share in North America.  Nokia has almost become invisible to developers and users of smartphones, and there is a risk that if Nokia does not make some positive inroads here, the effects could be critical.

What is also interesting is that RIM does not seem to have the growth curve like Nokia, Apple and Google ( NAG).  Again through the extrapolation of the growth lines of the different companies,  Apple should pass RIM in Q1 2011, and Android should pass RIM in Q1 2013.  Given this is still 3 years away, it shows RIM strong position today and an opportunity to change this course.  Depending on how Apple releases product through other carriers and its iPhone 4.0 release in the next several weeks, we may even see Apple pass RIM by the end of the year.

During Q1 of this Year, Nokia maintained it leadership in position and scale. The Company added close to 13M new device sales since 1 year earlier.  That is ramping up over 1M new units to ship per month or increasing the volume shipped of 33,000 per day.  For Nokia this is the increase per day, where as Google is shipping in its entirety 100,ooo Units per day.  This is  quite a big change as well, since at CTIA in March they announced the 60,000 Units per day.

As for Smartphone sales,  Symbian still leads the pack as 2.5X greater then the next player- RIM, 3x greater then Apple (iPhone) and 5x greater then Google ( Android).  The volumes for Symbian continue to show phenomenal growth even though the total market share went from 49% down to 44%.

It seems like this week was a key milestone for the HTML5 world. Google opened our Friday morning with an example of HTML5 Game ( PacMan) being added to the Google logo of search.  With approx 2B searches a day, this shows the scalability of having an active game embedded just as there was once a static logo.  Did Google pay for the rights of Pacman for the day? My wife thought her PC was attacked by a Virus!  Today was a great day for the progress of the web.

The Google I/O ( Input/Output) or ( Innovation/Openness) Conference was a great success in bringing more transparency and openness to web standards, and with the announcement of opening VP8 to the world as a royalty free licence ( I did not see the word perpetual???).  They launched Google TV, Music Streaming for the Android platform, and a wide variety of new announcements surrounding the Chrome App Store.  As for Wave, it has now moved from the closed invite only option that makes it very difficult to have a social network to being officially launched.

Yahoo announced the launch of a new class of interactive mobile display ads leveraging HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript technologies.  Yahoo stated that traditional static banners across the top and bottom of the mobile device screen were not optimal  and with–the new format promises to solve those issues via rich media content optimized for next-generation HTML5-based browsers. Yahoo Mobile product marketing staffers Mandar Shinde and Calvin Hung stated that this will enable  ”creative executions of interactive advertisements” on the Y! Mobile Blog.

Yahoo will launch its first interactive display campaign  with Paramounts and DreamWorks Animation release Shrek Forever After. “Going forward you can expect to see more ads that are tailored to the way people use mobile or that take advantage of particular attributes of mobile devices,” Shinde and Hung add. ”For example, we know users like to ‘content snack’ on mobile and ads that offer video or creative interactivity can be very successful.”

Now Adobe…. With all the chatter back and forth between Apple, iPad and the release of Flash, you think that Flash was the lifeline of Adobe.  Looking at this revenue breakdown of the company, it is clear that Flash is only a small part of the overall revenue strategy of Adobe.  What was very assuring is that now with HTML5 being the next coding platform for the Web, everybody is working together…

HTML5 aims to eliminate the need for web plug-ins like Adobe Flash. Instead, the functionality of Adobe’s Flash platform will be available right in the code of the web.)

The gradual elimination of Flash sounds like a bad thing for Adobe, but it’s actually not a huge problem. From a revenue perspective, Flash only accounted for 7% of the company’s revenue in fiscal 2009, or $231.2 million, according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard.

While losing a revenue source is never a good thing, the widespread adoption of HTML5 can actually be good for Adobe. The company is introducing a bunch of tools for web developers to make HTML5 sites. Its Dreamweaver software, in particular, is getting an update to help web designers. There’s no reason that Adobe couldn’t even built an “export to HTML5″ command in Flash. As HTML5 grows, Adobe can offer new tools, and thus drive revenue growth.

Both Flash and Dreamweaver are part of Adobe’s core business — “Creative Solutions” — which generated half of Adobe’s revenue last quarter.

Last week at OMMA mobile in NYC, Charles Johnson from Microsoft’s Mobile Advertising organization announced a key initiative that in my mind is in the forefront of mobile convergence; Multiscreen marketing in the mobile world.

[ Slide presentation]

The keynote paralleled Microsoft’s release of a full cross-media strategy of integrating their own assets of  MSN mobile to a consistant experience between Online and mobile.

1) Consistant Experience between PC and Mobile

2) Optimized for Smart Phones

3) Dynamic tabbed content and Auto suggest with Bing Mobile

4) Integrated seamless display and search through out all properties making it ubiquitous throughout a consumers day

This was a very strategic and forward thinking move by Microsoft as very few of the online ad networks have released as similar platform.  Now media buyers and planners can streamline their process with the integration of mobile as part of the overall strategy; A one-stop shop for media placement bringing a consistent experience across all the different platform types.  With this step and process moving forward, Microsoft is validating that  mobile is not only a separate channel but an integrated part of an entire media strategy.  As brands and marketers grapple with the right mobile strategy, this is a very clean and easy-of-entry strategy to buy cross-media through the entire Microsoft network and compare all media distribution for the most effective ROI. “Not only is it the media delivery” stated Charles, “but an integrated solution that will bring insights and analytics in one consistent vantage point.”

I am sure we will see many more companies following this lead in the near future, but this time Microsoft is a clear leader!

This article caught my attention as it is 2010 and now we are hearing about Nokia going after the Automobile.  Are they late to the game or is this the right timing?  When I go to the iPhone store and look at all the car applications with some of the massive integration efforts that have already started with Apple, my first impression that Nokia might be late to the game.  Nokia has been clearly focused in maps and navigation, so it would only make strategic sense to see this kind of announcement.

In the automotive industry they work on a different clock-speed.  It might not be as slow as the health care industry, but it is close.  In December 2008,  Qualcomm made an announcement on video streaming with mediaFLO with Toyota.   I guess that was good timing as at that time it was considered early days… Now about 18months later when the market is moving it is hard to disengage the standard that Qualcomm has brought to such a profound market leader.

Unlike other countries the Automobile is a very key part of the culture and lifestyle of many Americans.  Although, I have been looking to buses and trains a lot these days, in general, I would say we are very much an Automobile society and I am obsessed with my car like everybody else.  Getting a very strong foot print for Nokia in the car space may be an interesting angle to come back into the US Market, but it is a long  journey.

The key in my mind is for the cellular equipment manufacturer that does get into the Automobile will need to bring not just the data and the telephony aspects to the table, but the integration with the entire entertainment and navigation enablers to the table.   Nokia clearly has the navigation enablers, but lets see about the entertainment ones.  This is again where Apple has been strong, but they have been weak in the location and navigation space.  Could this be a place where Apple and Nokia collaborate?   We did see the strong collaboration between Apple and Google in the past, but now with the strife between them with Android, this could clearly be a unique opportunity as well for standardization to occur where Apple and Nokia come together. If they do not collaborate, then will we see a hodge-podge of different standards and devices integrated into my front seat?

[ Rethink Wireless article]

Operators no longer talk about the three screens – cellphone, TV and PC – but sharing content and services over many screens from fridges to cars. The in-car web systems are particularly important, and Nokia has announced plans to work with automotive entertainment firm Harman to codevelop a smartphone-to-car interface.

Nokia wants to go a step further and make this interface, for passing data and content between the two systems, into an industry standard – though so far, it hasn’t announced a timetable. The partners said the connection would be via USB, with Bluetooth as a back-up.

“The infotainment system of a modern car is a natural extension for the capabilities of smartphones,” said Vesa Luiro, director of Nokia’s automotive business unit. The two companies see a broad range of applications for a more integrated car/mobile system. The full range of smartphone apps could be offered via the high quality screens and audio systems in the car, and the handset and car could exchange information and tap into GPS.

Of course, Nokia has an eye on further enhancing its location and directions offering, Ovi Maps, which has been its most successful mobile software initiative since it made the app free early this year. It says the new connection could combine GPS data with vehicle information – for instance, locating a nearby gas station after a low fuel warning. Luiro said: “Not only will it simplify the use of turn-by-turn voice guidance from Ovi Maps, but also provide a new and easy way of accessing other content on the smartphone, such as music and delivering automotive specific applications from the Ovi Store.”

Pioneer has been working on a similar system using a tethered iPhone, while last week saw reports that Google was in talks to integrate Android with General Motors’ OnStar car service. This would allow the smartphone to control many auto functions remotely and also support similar features to Ford’s MyFord Touch, which provides dashboard phone control, navigation and media playing.