When I first exited Earls Court underground station, the first thing I saw - was the Tardis. Yes, yes, the same Police Box used by The Doctor in the popular TV Show Doctor Who. Then I walked to the conference center and again, what I saw instead of a big Symbian logo - was a huge painting of a Dalek done by a 10 years old.

“This can’t be right,” I thought, “I love the show but no way I’ve mistaken a fans event with an industry one!”

I felt better when, following an army of men with suits, I reached the right hall - right next to the hall with the Doctor Who exhibition. And then I realized the events are not so different. More on that later.

Here are some photos, movies from S60 event last night.
I’ll be updating through out today and tomorrow as well. Follow me on twitter.

(PS, since the Wi-Fi network at the show is unstable, I’ll only upload the bigger videos during the evening)

Freyja Melhorn just dropped us a word that FISHLABS had launched a Website and PSMS billing system in Russia. They plan to “make greater use of viral distribution for high quality mobile games in Russia”, supported by Iricom (MMSKA).

Michael Schade, Fishlabs’ CEO, was quoted saying: “The launch of our website in Russian was a very important step for FISHLABS. Russia is an unbelievably attractive market for us. Along with the large number of game-capable mobile phones and the favourable connection costs over the mobile network, the Russians’ technical affinity is legendary. It is no wonder that by far the largest share of “virally acquired” mobile gamers come from Russia. Combined with an in-game online connection, we can now generate significant revenues even from pirated copies via the PSMS connection through Iricom.”

I’ll let you read the whole press release next, for the fine details.
Read more »

Yup, I’m in London to bring you live reports, images and videos from the Smartphone Show held Tuesday-Wednesday at Earls Court. If you guys have something specific you’d wish me to check out / take a picture of - just write it in the comments to this post.

I’ll also be trying twitter live reporting, so feel free to follow me on http://twitter.com/mobilegd

Also, if you guys want to invite me to a round at your favorite pub, drop me a word!

PS, warm welcome to Radek, Luis Enrique, Faure, Jerome, Joshua and Craig who just joined MobileGD group on Linked-In.

Well, no one is surprised the economic crisis affects the mobile industry as well, but now we can actually see some numbers from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The problem with the big companies is that they supply work to many smaller companies in the industry - be it developers, services suppliers, industry journalism and even startups that were hoping for making an exit after selling to one of the big guys. There fore, it’s actually very important to all of us to know where are they now. On to the numbers. Read more »

Q3 highlights:

• Break even results, excluding restructuring charges, as challenging business conditions continued
• C902 Cyber-shot(TM) camera phone is hit model of the quarter
• First Xperia(TM) branded multimedia phone X1 began shipping
• Expansion of music service offering with announcement of
  PlayNow(TM) plus

The consolidated financial summary for Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB (Sony Ericsson) for the third quarter ended September 30, 2008 is as follows: Read more »

Forum Nokia’s newsletter from today lists a few sample applications that developers can use to learn how to develop with the new Touch UI API:

Developers eager to begin creating touch-enabled applications and content for the new S60 5th Edition now have a library of C++ example applications on Forum Nokia. These examples demonstrate the new features of S60 5th Edition, including the touch UI, tactile feedback, and orientation-awareness. The example applications include Solitaire, a fully optimised game for the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic device; Image Converter, which showcases the flexibility of the S60 UI by also supporting S60 3rd Edition devices with a keypad; and Memory Game, which demonstrates the use of S60 5th Edition’s built-in Open C++ runtime.

Another doze of charts, coming from the UK and US

> UK

Jamster - UK Game Download Chart, 15 August - 15 Sept 2008
Data Source: Jamster

Read more »

Capcom’s forthcoming “Resident Evil Degeneration” game will be powered by Ideaworks3D’s Airplay SDK.

The mobile game is said to be partly-based on the full-length CG movie of the same name that is to be released in Japan this month. In the movie a deadly virus is released by a terrorist at a US airport and the series favorites Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield tries to destroy it and prevent it’s spreading.

The mobile version of the famous PC horror video game franchise, is planed to have cutting-edge 3D graphics and be available on the N-Gage, KDDI au and Verizon VCAST, among other platforms. Read more »

Scott Janousek posted about an event he’s taking part in this Friday (Oct. 10th) in Boston - Programming advanced Nokia Features with Flash Lite.

The speakers include:

• Ganesh Sivaraman, Internet and Web 2.0 Business Development Manager, Forum Nokia
• Robert Burdick, Senior Architect for Emerging Technologies, Forum Nokia
• James Talbot, Adobe
• Alessandro Pace, Forum Nokia Champion
• Scott Janousek, Forum Nokia Champion
• Rob Toole, Fidelity
• Ira Hochman, Untravel Media

Scott is going to talk on “Programming Advanced Nokia Features with Flash Lite” which sounds pretty interesting. Also, in the event page it’s said Attendees will also be eligible to win Nokia N95 - 8GB smart phones. And there is free food.

You can check out the agenda and then head to register.

NAVTEQ holds it’s yearly LBS Challenge contest this year again, which is your opportunity to win fame and (some) fortune if you’ve developed / working on an LBS app or service. It can be a business app, navigation tool or fall under the ’social networking’ category which is where all the games are..

If you’re from the EMEA region you might want to be quick, though, as submissions deadline is October 24th (in 17 days). The Americans got until November 28 to submit and the guys from the APAC region… well, you guys can only begin to register on October 31.

The prize pool is noted for being US$5.25 Million, which is a LOT. Also worth noting each region has it’s own grand prize winner and runner ups, something that could probably help bring more developers to the spotlight.

The grand prize for EMEA Region is €35,000 cash + a three-year NAVTEQ territory license, grand prize in the Americas is $50,000 cash + a three-year NAVTEQ territory license. All winners and runner-ups will also get a free licensing of deCarta’s Drill Down Server geospatial software platform or Hosted Web Services with its servers. Read more »