Val Christopherson reports from CES, Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS – The AT&T Developer Summit is going on today in Las Vegas in conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Show this week.

One bit of mobile news from that front comes from WaveMarket, which provides mobile location-based applications.The company announced that it will join the Veriplace Location Platform Initiative to enable access to AT&T’s location infrastructure for more than 1,000 third-party developers using the Veriplace cloud location platform.

Through WaveMarket’s applications, developers will be able to create location-aware SMS, Web, WAP and IVR applications that are compatible with all of the major operating systems. What does this mean in the big picture?

As an example, AT&T customers who sign up for a mobile weather application can give that application permission to send alerts about approaching storms or severe conditions based on his or  her location, even when the customer may not have the application actively running on the handset. Sounds pretty cool. It’s yet another example of the big carriers jumping on the app selling bandwagon.

Forget about Google versus Microsoft. This mobile arms race between Apple and Google just keeps getting more interesting, with each punch served by another counter punch.

The latest one-two jab comes from the mobile advertising arena. Google acquired AdMob back in November to bolster its muscle, and now Apple just purchased Quattro Wireless for a reported $275 million. 

All the remaining independent players are left to comment on how the space is undeniably fire brand hot. Heck, even Oracle jumped into the fray with its Oracle Communications Marketing and Advertising offering about three weeks ago.

Check out this punch-counterpunch over the last two days: Apple makes the Quattro announcement, then Google unveils its sleek new Nexus One Android phone (love the Blade Runner reference), then yesterday Steve Jobs touted the Apple App store reaching the 3-billion-download milestone just three months after it reached 2 billion.

Now, what’s Google going to do before Apple’s Jan. 27 rollout of its new iSlate Apple tablet? Can’t wait to findout.

More to follow tomorrow.

 Val Christopherson is managing director of Global Results Communications, Irvine, CA. Reach her at valeriec@globalresultspr.com.

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Posted in Columns on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 | 7 Comments »
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