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Motorola announced last month that it wants to sell its mobile phone unit, which is ranked third in global market share, according to Engadget.

No one’s buying. This month, several companies including Samsung and Dell have announced that they are not interested in laying out US$9 to 12 billion for the business.

It’s a bit of a shock. The Motorola brand name is well known, and the company has remained competitive. Certainly some up-and-coming manufacturer would want that nameplate! It’s the kind of play that made sense a few years ago, when Chinese manufacturer Lenovo purchased IBM’s personal computer business, including the ThinkPad name.

Motorola executives backpedaled last week at the Mobile World Congress, announcing that the company remains committed to the mobile handset industry.

Last Monday, Microsoft purchased Danger, the developer of T-Mobile’s Sidekick line. Om Malik estimated that Microsoft paid US$500 million for a mobile handset line that has a decent market share among the under-30 crowd.

From Forbes: developers are readying programs that will actually run on the iPhone, instead of just in the Safari web browser. There’s a wide variety of web-based applications available, but these programs don’t offer the speed and features that an application that is actually running on the iPhone could provide. Web-based applications also have to respect firewall and security rules in order to access any Web-based data.

Apple has not released a Software Developers Kit (SDK) that contains tools that help programmers access the iPhone’s resident applications like the address book and calendar.

Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian mobile phones do run applications directly. The operating system developers released SDKs long ago.

Apple has maintained strict control over the iPhone application market through the company’s exclusive agreements with mobile carriers. Carriers either want to sell the iPhone or sometime like it, as I discussed on 13 January 2008. It’s widely assumed that Apple will let programmers sell their iPhone applications through iTunes, which is the management software for iPhone users. Ars Technica revealed that an iPhone application installation key – a very long string of numbers – has been identified by some programmers and released on the Internet as an image file.

Of course, Apple would take a percentage on any software sold through iTunes. The Forbes article mentions 30 percent as a possible fee. As Marc Hedlund pointed out last November, the Sidekick uses a similar business model. As a Sidekick user, I agree with Marc – I hate paying for features on my phone. The Sidekick 3 doesn’t include a world clock, for example. Users have to navigate to the phone’s download screen and buy a clock.

One of the Sidekick’s original developers, Andy Rubin, now works for Google on its Open Handset Alliance project. I mentioned the project on 5 November 2007. Here are some other articles about the rumored gPhone.

There are third-party iPhone applications available, of course. Some of these are designed to unlock the iPhone, or to add an application installer feature.

But Apple can break these unauthorized applications or change the application installation key at any time by updating the iPhone firmware, as I mentioned on 26 January 2008.

HPU has rolled out a campus emergency notification system that will notify students and employees by email and text message. The system was announced on Pipeline on 25 September. I discussed similar systems on 17 April, and USA Today discussed Rave in an article on 25 October 2006.

HPU students and staff can enroll online with Rave at https://www.getrave.com/login/hpu/

The service is free, and the enrollment process requires a Pipeline ID and password.

I did notice that the telephone number fields will not support international calling codes. Most students on Oahu would use a North American phone number, but there might be distance education students who would want emergency notification messages. The Rave system could be used to announce unscheduled WebCT and Pipeline outages.

Subscribers can get their Rave notifications by email, which is a good alternative for users of push email systems like the iPhone, Blackberrys, Sidekicks and some Windows Mobile devices.

Also, the enrollment form appears to validate entries as they are typed. Many web forms include programming code to catch data entry errors in the web browser, before the submit button is pressed. Client-side validation can reduce network traffic and server load, if the validation scripts are well-written and carefully tested.

To test the form, I entered some incorrect data. Then I tried to edit the data. I had to click and hold with my trackpad while retyping the numeric fields.

It’s not the most obvious solution – I tried deleting and backspacing over the bad data, but the cursor kept jumping to another field. The validation script assumed that I’d entered the data correctly the first time.

The Rave system does send a confirmation message to the mobile phone number that was entered on the enrollment screen. The user get on a web browser and enter a 4-digit code from the text message to activate their account.

The email side of the system does not send an activation or conformation code, which I found curious. I entered my Gmail email address.

There’s been a surge in notification system deployments since April, as universities and colleges look for better ways to notify stakeholders of important events.

Some universities have found these systems useful when the weather gets bad. At other schools, these systems are also used to notify students when classes are canceled or events are rescheduled.

An emergency notification system is also an important part of disaster recovery planning (DRP) for any large organization. CIOs and their staff must have a reasonable, well-tested action plan to resolve issues that threaten the organization’s employees, staff and information systems. Rave’s system can improve a DRP implementation by asking people to staff off-campus during an emergency.

Of course, the Rave system works best when many users are registered with their correct information. Students tend to change email addresses and phone numbers often, and there’s nothing that compels students to use the system.

Another issue involves marketing. An emergency notification system should not be used to send advertising and marketing messages to users. There are some services that allow these messages. However, the last thing I expect from an emergency notification service is spam and ads.

Sinead Carew of Reuters writes that AT&T and Apple are being watched closely by tech analysts as the June 29th debut of the iPhone approaches. If AT&T stores, web sites, call centers or data services can’t handle the strain, the iPhone introduction could be a Newtonesque flop. Technorati is full of blog posts about the iPhone.

AT&T has a five-year exclusive on the iPhone, so other carriers have been beefing up their offerings. Verizon is now marketing ESPN’s mobile features, which were once part of ESPN Mobile. That service died in 2006, as I reported in my old blog on September 29.

Today, YouTube posted a video clip of Google CEO Eric Schmidt using an iPhone. Google bought YouTube last year, and is also providing some web apps for the iPhone. Schmidt is also an Apple board member. Take a look at 24:30 minutes into the 32-minute clip - it seems Schmidt still needs a bit of practice with his iPhone.

Walt Mossberg brandished his new iPhone during a meeting with college presidents last week. Walt seems a bit worried about the virtual keyboard, and I can’t blame him. Touch typing on an iPhone is impossible. Mossberg’s reviews in the Wall Street Journal can make or break new technology products, so it’s no surprise that Engadget ran a story with a reference to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s original post.

It’s worth noting the the Chronicle’s story spawned a long trail of comments, many of which disputed CenterNetwork’s US$1936 estimate for a user’s first year of iPhone service. I mentioned that figure in my June 6 post.

Management professor Sandy Piderit of Case Western Reserve University isn’t shy about her desire for an iPhone. She’s already opened a wireless account with AT&T, and is considering waiting in line on June 29th to get one. Better wait in line at a rebranded AT&T store, as initial quantities will be quite limited, according to multiple reports. Franchisees and resellers won’t get iPhones.

The iPhone isn’t a business device

Piderit compares the iPhone to the Blackberry and the Treo. She missed the mark: Apple isn’t pursing business customers, and they are the core demographic for the two devices she mentioned. As Wayne Sutton notes, the iPhone may drive more business to BlackBerry, a platform that has several years of brand equity and reputation.

The iPhone is really competing with consumer data devices like Helio’s MySpace phones and T-Mobile’s Sidekick line. I switched from a Cingular 8125 to a Sidekick 3 in April. Frankly, the Sidekick 3 has been more reliable than the Cingular 8125. The only 8125 feature that I miss is WiFi, but I can still use that device without the GSM card. The iPhone will support WiFi data connections.

The iPhone is just an iPod with a data phone

At its heart, the iPhone is a video iPod with a data phone. My Sidekick 3 can accept a miniSD card, so it’s trivial to install additional storage memory. The iPhone has no memory card slot. The initial iPhone models offer 4 or 8 GB of memory, enough to hold few hundred songs on an iPod, but barely enough capacity for videos. As most iPod users know, the iPod is useless without a companion computer. See my March 21 post for more discussion.

Sandy really likes the visual voice mail feature. However, US cell phone users can switch their voice mail to a free service like CallWave and get that feature no. Of course, the visual feature requires a computer. The iPhone will display voice mail on the phone itself.

The only way that third party apps will get into the iPhone is through the Web. While I can install apps directly to my Sidekick, iPhone apps have to work in the Safari web browser. I’m not sure which approach is better. Web-based apps are easier to update - just patch the server. But web-based apps also require a data connection. As I mentioned on April 17th, the mobile web might be the best opportunity that telcos have to build new value into their services.

So I’ll wait for the iPhone to prove its worth. If it’s a success, AT&T will drop prices to a reasonable level within 12 months.

UPDATE 21 June 15:05 HT: AT&T has told stores to get ready for cattle, er, crowd control. Read Clover Thoughts for more details and a screenshot of AT&T’s email to store managers.

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The mobile site should resolve cleanly, so that the content is at the top of the mobile page. Sidebar content, including the search and calendar features, are not available for mobile users.

The following web addresses redirect to billso.com:

• m.billso.com
• mobi.billso.com
• mobile.billso.com
• billso.mobi

Users who have specific questions or comments about the site’s mobile support can contact us by email. See the Facebook badge on this page for the address.

More mobile sites

Here are some of my favorite mobile web sites that support mobile phones and PDAs:

• Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/pocketpc/
• BoingBoing: http://boingboing.net/
• ESPN: http://m.espn.go.com/
• Facebook: http://m.facebook.com/
• Gmail: http://m.gmail.com/ and http://gmail.com/app
• Google: http://google.com/m?source=classic
• Honolulu Advertiser: http://m.honoluluadvertiser.com/
• Honolulu Star-Bulletin: http://starbulletin.com/indext.html
• New York Times: http://mobile.nytimes.com
• Reuters: http://mobile.reuters.com
• Yahoo!: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com and http://mobile.yahoo.com/

Related posts on billso.com

• 18 May 2008: The mobile web still works with billso.com
• 4 April 2008: billso.com on the iPhone and the iPod Touch
• 20 February 2008: Mobile phone platform wars
• 5 February 2008: The mobile web and billso.com
• 27 November 2007: The mobile web isn’t ready yet