Daily Marauder

WIRELESS

Starting today, a version of Amazon‘s e-reader Kindle will be available as a free application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. Users will be able to download books or periodicals from a library of about 240,000 materials to the devices, usually for about $10. Users who own Amazon’s hand-held e-reader device, Kindle, and one of the Apple devices will be able to sync their reading material across their various devices via an Amazon service called Whispersync, at no extra charge. The New York Times (3/4) , The Wall Street Journal ( (3/4)

Just loaded onto my iPhone and ready to go but as of yet, untested.  KUDOS to Amazon though for being open and innovative enough with their technology to allow additional devices to access it.  If only others could learn from this shining Amazon example….  I’m not sold on reading something on a screen so small but I won’t know until I try it.

Social networks suck if you can’t find friends that use them. This is especially true for those social networks oriented around sharing your location; for the most part, you end up knowing where you and three other people are before you get bored and give up. Following a trend made popular by Facebook, the mobile social mapping service Loopt has added a “Friends You May Know” feature to their iPhone application, allowing you to find and follow friends of friends without having to know their mobile number. Fun new features don’t just write them selves, though, so Loopt has also added a few advertisements throughout the application for the sake of getting some revenue out of their iPhone endeavors. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/03/04/loopt-adds-friends-you-may-know-and-advertisements-to-their-iphone-app 3/4)

Social gaming company Zynga is consistently releasing awesome games for the iPhone / iPod Touch (e.g. Live Poker), and today they are debuting the popular word game Scramble exclusively for the platform with the launch of the “Scramble Live” app (iTunes link). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/04/zynga-brings-scramble-to-the-iphone 3/4)

A tipster points out to Phandroid that the Vodafone website confirms the Android-powered HTC Magic, recently announced, is arriving in April. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/03/04/vodafone-to-start-shipping-htc-magic-in-april 3/4)

Way back in October of 2008, RIM announced that they’d be joining in on the App Store game with the launch of an application outlet of their own. While it has yet to see the light of day, RIM is announcing that at least one thing has since been finalized: the name. The temporary “BlackBerry Application Center” moniker has been abandoned, with RIM instead opting for “BlackBerry App World”. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/03/04/blackberry-application-center-redubbed-as-blackberry-app-world 3/4)

Spurred partly by the popularity of new touch-screen devices, smartphones almost doubled their share of U.S. handset sales in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier, according to an NPD Group study. Led by the growth of Apple’s iPhone, NPD reported, smartphones held a 23% market share, compared with 12% for the same period a year earlier as the average cost of the devices fell 23% to $167. CNET (3/3) , CNNMoney.com/Dow Jones Newswires (3/3)

There are more signs the recession is taking its toll on the mobile handset and services businesses: Research firm Gartner reported that cell phone sales fell 5% in the fourth quarter from the previous year, while Juniper Research warned that revenue growth from mobile-entertainment services could dip to as low as 7% if the economy does not pick up. Gartner did say handset demand could stabilize in 2010, and Juniper offered a best-case scenario of a 19% revenue gain for entertainment services. CNNMoney.com/Dow Jones Newswires (3/3) , cellular-news (U.K.) (3/3)

Small wireless carriers are joining groups like Consumer Union and software provider Mozilla in lobbying government agencies to prevent cell phone companies from making exclusive deals. Julius Genachowski may offer support to these groups if he takes up the FCC chairman post. BusinessWeek (3/4)