Thats it, on Tuesday the expectation ended and the long awaited mobile phone the so-called Gphone was officially announced.
I can’t remember such anticipation for a mobile device rather than the iPhone, of course.
The G1 is a product of HTC, T-Mobile and Google, 4 executives set down and explained why the G1 will be such a hit, However it seemed that Google was not so enthusiastic, go ask Sergey Brin and Larry Page that came to say hello and roll out.
Do not get me wrong, That is Google’s first mobile phone, but for them unlike T-Mobile and HTC, it is just the beginning, The beginning of a new era.

The iPhone for example changed the mobile industry and for the first time the hardware was not the issue.
It does not matter how much megapixel the camera is and if there are stereo speakers or not.
Until the iPhone came hardware was the issue, than apple made it all about software and more important user interface.
So which era has began now that the first Android phone is out?! It is the mobile OS era.
I am sorry to disappoint you but I do not think that Apple thought at first to release the OSX SDK for developers.
Jobes, thinking as a centralist as always, wanted to alter the mobile industry like he did with the iPod, nothing less.
He did not notice the MAIN issue in mobile consumption which is the content and that the quality of experience is influenced by the variety of possibilities.
After the iPhone hit the market, it was noticed that the beautiful “box” itself isn’t enough and that Apple is not a services development company.
Back to the Android and the OS era, Google want to be on any mobile phone, where is it an Android based phone or even an iPhone.

This fact brings me to my main point, Google does not want to create full web experience mobile phones, there are already enablers that do just that, take a look at Opera, Skyfire and yes again at the iPhone.
Google just want to build a mobile OS, It have all the services to do that like mail, maps, IM etc and the rest will fall into the developers hands.
Google’s Android comparison to the iPhone is really like comparing Symbian to J2ME.
Google tries to enable others to create services but still, Google still think as the player that came after the iPhone and try to clone the AppStore’s business model.
Only in the case that Google removes all restrictions and barriers and attract the operators and the users, they will be able to take control over the mobile OS market and operate as the Microsoft of the mobile world.
If Apple continues with the same attitude, they will be the Apple of the mobile OS market, nice, shaped, with no significant market share.
So enough with my analysis what do you think?

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Nowadays mobile services struggle to generate income but maybe the user just asks for more, not a value added service but just to save him some money.
No I am not talking about either Blyk,  Sugarmama or Cellcom’s Zmoney, It is about a new VOIP service called PokeTalk.
Parrot-Media’s new service PokeTalk offers users free calls using their own phone, just write your number and destination and talk for free.
Jajah offers the same service for cheap rates but PokeTalk is absolutely free, while targeted advertising is shown on the screen.
PokeTalk has also a Facebook application, one click and the user can talk for free, one click and Parrot-Media can build the advertisers a complete profile of the user.
In the future Parrot-Media will offer free sms and wake up calls as a return you will watch some ads, understood?

The service is launched for US, UK, Japan, Singapore, Germany, Chanda and Israel users. You can try the service at www.poketalk.com

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After the announcement of Facebook that its Chat will support Jabber/XMPP, I waited for IM (=Instant Messaging) clients to support Facebook Chat.
Even on PC the response came after some month, but today Facebook Chat came to mobile devices thanks to Ebuddy.
Here is the announcement and here are some screenshots:

You can also use the mobile-web based client at: m.ebuddy.com

Cellcom has launched today a new advertising campaign named “Time Is Money” – ZMoney (in Hebrew the word Time is Zman so ZMoney is the combination of time and money).
“Time Is Money” allow subscribers to accumulate free air time (in this case up to 45 minutes).
As for the old saying “nothing is free” the minutes are awarded after watching ads on the computer and answering 1-2 questions.
Advertisers will pay  0.47$ for a proven ad (user that answers the right question after the ad).
Cellcom expects to generate 4.2 million dollars, half of the investment “buying” air time.

The model is just like virgin’s SugerMama that was launched back in 2006 and is doing quite well.
There are 750,000 users and the CTR is standing on 5%, 10 times more than regular internet CTR ( As Scott Kelliher says on MobiAD).
Cellcom’s CEO, Amos Shapira, said that “Cellular phone advertising will happen in the end and it will be big”.
He could not put it in a better way, the mobile advertising did not “happen” yet, “Time Is Money” is a good example why.
Take the internet advertising as an example, the same advertising model exists on it too, rewarding users for watching ads and answering surveys.
The model is alive and generating some millions of dollars but lets put it that way: This is not internet advertising.

If you make an internet advertisement and reward the user with air time…. how is it a mobile advertisement?!

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