Analyst Katherine Egbert, of the investment bank Jefferies, wrote in a note to clients, “Our recent industry checks indicate Microsoft will be debuting its own phone, in the next two months. We expect the new phone to debut soon, either at the Feb 15-18 Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona Spain, or possibly at CTIA in Las Vegas one month later.”

Egbert believes that the phone, which is expected to be Zune-like, will be made through an OEM partnership, much like Google has with HTC for their Nexus One.

It is rumoured that the project for this new phone has underway for a while, under the codename ‘Pink’. A mobile handset release would complete Microsoft’s trilogy after Windows and the Xbox. The phone is expected to have a five mega-pixel camera and support 720p HD video and some form of music subscription or buying service.

Microsoft might have decided to make their own phone, irrespective of Google’s mobile strategy, to augment the revenue generated by Windows Mobile, which is currently not very large. They might also feel that they can deliver a better mobile software experience if the hardware is also their own.

There is no information as yet about the cost or service partnerships in place for this new phone.

If the phone is actually released any time in the near future, people are bound to think that Microsoft has lost all originality and is now merely following in Google’s footsteps.

CNet reports that Skype and Nokia announced their partnership at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The software for Skype’s Internet calling service will now be integrated on some of Nokia’s high-end smart phones. The first model to have this facility will be the N97, which is slated for a June release. The Skype service, however, will only be started in the third quarter of the year.

Once the service is started it will be integrated into the address book and users will automatically be able to see which of their Skype contacts are online. They will also be able to use its instant messaging service. This facility will enable N97 users to make calls over the Internet irrespective of whether they are using a 3G cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. All Skype-to-Skype voice calls will be free, while Skype to landline or mobile calls will be at low rates.

Sony Ericsson also announced a deal with Skype. Sony will provide a Skype panel on the Windows Mobile Xperia1 handset.

While this is great news for consumers, especially those who need to make frequent international calls, mobile network operators are not likely to be thrilled with this development. Free and low cost international calls via Skype would mean lower revenue generation for their own networks.

It is not impossible that networks such as AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile may require the Skype service to be discontinued from handsets using their networks in the U.S.A. Three UK is one of the only major networks to have forged a relationship with Skype.
Skype’s chief operating Officer Scott Durchslag says that though they are starting this service with the high end phones, it will also be made available on mid-tier handsets in the future.

T-Mobile + Yahoo!

T-Mobile’s deal with Google to provide search to their customers was one of the first of its kind when they launched their Web ‘n’ Walk service. Today that partnership has been terminated in favour of a new deal forged with Yahoo! Beginning in March, T-Mobile customers in 11 European countries will see Yahoo!’s mobile oneSearch by default on their phones.

Official press release: Yahoo! and T-Mobile Partnership

“T-Mobile’s decision to work with Yahoo! is a clear demonstration of the strength of our industry-leading mobile search service and our ability to work with partners to give consumers the best possible mobile Internet experience,” says Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo! Inc.

Nokia + Google

Nokia Search, the new facility powered by Google will be launched on Nokia’s N96, N78, Navigator 6210 and classic 6220 models in a few select countries. Eventually Nokia plans to make this service available in over 100 countries and it will run in 42 different languages.

Official press release: Google and Nokia team up on search

The Google search box is already available on Nokia Internet Tablets and Nokia also supports Google’s YouTube videos on their N95 8GB model. This latest deal between the two companies will enable written and oral search services with document and photo sharing facility through audio and video applications. It will also provide Internet navigation and online music. In other words, it will allow users to browse around, access maps, messages etc. through just a click on their mobile phones.

Google VP Vic Gundotra says, “Google search combined with the high quality applications on Nokia devices (will) help make information available to Nokia device users wherever they are and provide an excellent overall experience.”

Digging Deeper

On the surface this might seem like everyday business… winning some clients, and losing some to the competition. However, considering what’s at stake here, the ramifications are much, much deeper.

T-Mobile, like most UK operators considers Google to be a serious threat to their future revenue streams. All operators want a large slice of the mobile advertising pie. Google has played hard ball, and severed a few relationships along the way. T-Mobile’s decision to drop Google and partner with Yahoo! has likely little to do with Yahoo!’s superior mobile search product offering and more to do with a strategic move to decrease Google’s dominance in mobile.

Nokia has been debating about its mobile search strategy for a while now. They have considered launching their own search facility within their phones, partnering with Google, or using a white label mobile search provider. This announcement most likely indicates that in spite of the fact that the two companies are rivals in many ways (Nokia’s S60 software competes with Google’s Android platform), the world’s largest handset manufacturer has accepted the fact that they could never develop as good a search service as Google, and if they tried to compete with Google’s brand recognition in search, they would most likely lose.

Forging a relationship with Google allows Nokia to tap into the mobile search market rather than ending up being completely excluded from it.

In return, Google could potentially gain direct access to 40% of worldwide mobile users and 50% of the Smartphone users via their handsets.

This means that even the T-Mobile customers who would have otherwise no longer seen Google search, might once again see it in the near future on their Nokia phone itself without even having to access the operator portal. Nokia and Google’s deal could thereby cut off operators like T-Mobile and competitors like Yahoo! completely. Few tears are likely being shed at Google for the loss of the T-Mobile contract, in the face of this potentially huge new opportunity.

By using 2D Barcode and QR Code technology Google is trying to facilitate business deals between consumers and vendors. The 2D Barcodes are added to Google Print Ads, which can be published in newspapers, magazines, buses, signboards, flyers etc. In addition to the traditional contact details printed on the ads the 2D Barcodes can provide much more details about the advertiser in a small space.

2D barcodes are similar to traditional barcodes and can be used to encode data about the advertiser. Most 2D Barcodes use either the QR Code or Data Matrix format. A QR code or quick response code enables the contents to be decoded at high speeds.

When a person interested in the product being advertised, sees this barcode, he/she can take a picture of it on his mobile phone. If the device then has the appropriate decoding software installed on it, the phone will decode the information and present it to the user. If the information is in the form of a website URL, the phone could access the encoded URL directly.

This feature is currently in just a beta testing phase, 2D barcode can only be incorporated by a limited number of advertisers who are already running Google Print Ads campaigns. Advertisers wishing to use the service can select the Print Ad details such as the ad space required, the publications desired etc and upload their ad along with the barcode.

Google Print Ads 2D Barcodes

Using innovations like this to improve the adverrtiser and consumer experience will most likely keep Google ahead of the game. Neither Yahoo! nor Microsoft have ad platforms that are anywhere near as advanced as Google’s offerings.

A vast number of mobile phones do not allow JavaScript to run on their browsers. Furthermore, even with those that do allow JavaScript, many do not allow cookies. In fact, a number of mobile network operators block cookies as well as session details from being passed on to third parties such as Google AdWords.

Without cookies, the vast majority of conversions resulting from AdWords ads on mobile devices will go undetected. This is a serious issue, as it implies that the ROI calculations many mobile advertisers make for their campaigns will be far from the actual figures.

Not only is this a serious problem for Google, who has traditionally bragged about the exceptional accountability and reporting capabilities of its advertising platform, but it is also one that cannot be solved by the search giant.

Google needs to either find a better, more innovative way to provide accurate conversion tracking for mobile ads, or advertisers will shrug their shoulders and accept it as a flaw till a better, more reliable system is introduced, probably by a network operator.

An account manager at Google AdWords has confirmed this is the case. Her reply to our query is quoted below:

“A significant percentage of mobile browser and carrier combinations do not support cookies. Google adds cookies to a user’s mobile device when he or she clicks on an ad to track conversions. Therefore, if users are using mobile browsers or carriers that do not accept or support cookies, they will not be included in your conversion tracking statistics.

Additionally, cookies on mobile phones expire faster than the ones created for PCs. Therefore, a significant number of conversions for your site may go unrecorded after a certain period of time. When viewing conversions for a specified time period, note that conversions are assigned to the date on which the ad click occurs, not the date on which the conversion occurs. In addition, we will not be able to report conversions for users who disable cookies.

Conversion tracking is also not supported when users disable images on their mobile phones.

Although Google cannot record every conversion due to the reasons mentioned above, your conversion rate, cost-per-conversion, cost-per-transaction and value/click are adjusted to reflect only those sites from which we can track conversions.“

Update:

The post has been updated to clarify that the lack of JavaScript support on a mobile device is not a problem in and of itself. The problem lies in the cookies being rejected by mobile operators. Since the time of publication of this post, Google has updated its conversion tracking platform, and now offers an improved solution for conversion tracking on mobile searches.