Do you remember the Monolith Project by Emblaze? and the iPhone look-alike Edelweiss? Yesterday, in a financial report of Emblaze group, they mentioned the two projects.
We thought that both projects faded away, but it seems like the Monolith project is still live and kicking and production will start this year.
Moreover Emblaze invested more than 150 million dollars on this particular project.
On the other hand, due to no remarks on the Edelweiss device we conclude that it just dried out.

Edelweiss to flower that will never flourish?

Emblaze financial report

[via Calcalist]

Today, Israeli leading TV channel (Channel 2), launched its 3G mobile interactive portal )IVVR portal which is based on 3G video calls). This launch makes the Israeli market world’s first to have IVVR portals for all major TV channels. The video calls-based service was created by the partnership between Ugunduzi IVVR Services, DSPV, and Teleclal a partnership which also created and operates the IVVR portal of Israeli channel 10.

The portal provides an immediate access to news casts, weather information, and a live stream of news. The live video is delivered when a live news show is broadcasted and in special events such as breaking news. It is a great challenge to deliver a good live stream video over IVVR in real-time but this new portal presents an unparallel video quality.

Idan Gafni, owner of Ugunduzi IVVR Services said: “The partnership between Ugunduzi, DSPV, and Teleclal provides our customers a comprehensive IVVR solution combined with market understanding, and services innovations, development, and hosting. We use the technology and our knowledge to launch services for media companies, advertisement agencies, content providers, financial institutions, and customer service centers. We launched the first commercial IVVR service in Israel and lead the market since then. We now aim to replicate the success we have in Israel to other countries starting in European countries.”

The unique combination of Israel’s strength in technology with the IVVR potential understanding pushed Israel to be a leading country in IVVR services. IVVR services usage in Israel increases with every launched service and shows a constant growth since the beginning of 2009.

In the U.S., video calls were never deployed so the market had no choice and mobile portals are based on the mobile web, making the American market irrelevant for video calls-based services (at the moment).

In Europe, where 3G penetration is higher in most countries, users are accustomed to use the mobile web. Will the market education, to move users from mobile web to richer experience using IVVR, that succeeded in Israel have the same success?! There is a limited opportunity before the market fixates on mobile web and forgets the potential and the promise of the IVVR technology.

Israeli navigation software company, Telmap, announced a deal with O2 UK. Supporting O2 devices will come with a pre-loaded software from Telmap. Location based services become more popular in different forms of devices and usage patterns like PND, hanheld devies, and smartphones. The PND has a simple business model, purchase the dedicated device with the navigation shoftware included. For smartphones, there are various business models based on lisence, service, and data charges.

From the user’s perspective, there are free services such as OVI maps and Google Maps. In adition, there are many providers of stand-alone software such as Navi2Go .
Telmap business model is based on distribution in cooperation with the operators and the pre-loading of the application on supported devices. The revenue model is based on a monthly subscription fee.

This approach takes advantage of the captive customers who are not aware of the other solutions out there and although it can generate a significant revenue stream at the moment, it is a dying model with no real hopes in the future as users become more aware to the other options out there.

We are sure that O2 mentioned more than once in the negotiation process its relations with the mother company, Telefonica, and the question is if that is the first step of Telmap towards an agreement with Telefonica.

A topic we were reluctant to write about is the iPhone launch in Israel. From a device the operators did not want to import so much, to a situation where there are 70K+ illegal iPhone devices in Israel and Hebrew hacks to the iPhone.

Long story short, two operators talked with Apple and each of them thought it will have exclusivity or at least several months head start but Apple played them and they both released the PR on the same day. The third company (Cellcom) saw the struggle and understood it was left behind so they hurried up and signed an agreement with Apple as well.

Now the situation in Israel is that from a country with no special interest in the iPhone, we will have according to the companies’ agreement around 300K iPhone devices sold every year by the three operators. In a market of less than 7.5 Million devices, we will have around 1 Million iPhones!!!

The operators are getting ready for the iPhone round, all 3 of them are  working on dedicated apps that will be ready for the D-day when the iPhone will be launched.

Another interesting fact that was brought to my attention is that although Cellcom is the last company to sign with Apple, if you look at Apple’s Israel iPhone 3Gs page where the logos are, you will see that Cellcom’s logo is on top twice as large as the other two logos. Ususally there are no “mistakes” that give priority in some way to one company.

So after the short background, you understand how surprised we were that Cellcom anounced that they launch an iPhone look-alike to the market where thay know is going to be very saturated.

It seems like the iPhone did not grab all the attention of the operators, they also paid attention to the uprising of Google mobile OS, the Android.
Pelephone has announced that it will bring the HTC magic, and Bers-Electra the company that represent Sony Ericsson in Israel has announced that Android powered devices are soon to come.
But yesterday Cellcom was the first to launch an Android device the Samsung I7500.

The device will cost 3780 NIS (105*36) full price.
Orange will start selling the Samsung I7500 from next month too
The interesting part is that the device will support the Andorid Market, something that is not obvious.
Israeli mobile market will very soon be a very strange market. The competition in a small country between 3 strong and almost equal companies, made them do very dramatic steps and in this rate, every user in Israel will have a 3 smart phones because the operators signed deals with a very agressive commiting sales projection.