Motorola is exploring spinning off its mobile devices unit “to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value.”

The move comes in an ever increasingly tight market which has seen Apple capture 19.5% of the smartphone market in its first twelve months, a new iPhone style device announced by GPS provider Garmin, and a slew of Android powered phones coming later this year, including at least one mobile phone from computer maker Dell.

Motorola’s mobile phone market share has continued to slide in the face of existing competition with the handset unit recording a $1.2 billion loss in the 4th quarter of 2007.

Although mobile phones are still perhaps the public face of Motorola, the company is also an enterprise provider of communications tools to business, Government and the military.

We’re placing Motorola’s handset unit on Deadpool watch. Motorola has had a mixed track record of spinning off companies, having success with Freescale Semiconductor, however Iridium saw what was once the worlds leading commercial satellite network file for bankruptcy in 1999. A new company based around a business unit with a $1.2 billion loss is going to take some serious work in turning around under normal circumstances, but in a market that will see a slew of new competitors and where a new comer such as Apple can take such a big slice of the market in such a short time, it will be harder again, if not near on impossible.

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

We've harshed on GE's cameras before, but the company showed up at PMA with a new model called the E1050 (pictured) that's actually pretty slick. The 10 megapixel shooter features a 5x optical zoom, HD-res video mode, HDMI out, a 3-inch touchscreen, and an integrated GPS radio that syncs up with your computer to automatically geotag your shots. All for just $249 -- even if thing takes just average pictures, that's quite a bargain. We'll have a hands-on soon, and read on for specs on the rest of GE's 2008 lineup, all of which include face and blink detection.

Continue reading GE unveils the geotagging 10 megapixel E1050, eight other new cams

 

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UVLayer is a new application that works on Adobe AIR. The service revolves around a video player and sharing tool, letting you search for clips across the web, and share them with friends with drag’n'drop capabilities. Once you’ve downloaded Adobe AIR and the UVLayer application, you can login and begin watching clips.

The videos available on UVLayer can be organized, pretty much however you’d like them to be. If you perform a search, than you’ll see all the videos from your query displayed in a box. You can watch any one of these, share it with friends, see related clips, leave a comment or see the activity going on around this clip. You can also remove it from the search query (which acts as a saved search) and create a “stack.”

Stacks act as channels for these videos. You can name stacks, and add other clips you’d like to include in a particular stack. These collections can be shared with friends, as can individual videos and search queries. Sharing videos with Facebook is easy enough, as there’s an option to login to your Facebook account directly from UVLayer. Otherwise, sharing with other UVLayer friends is as simple as dragging a clip over your friend’s avatar, which displays (like a buddy list) on the righthand side of the UVLayer application.

One thing I found particularly buggy (or nonexistent) is the related videos option for clips you access through another related search. This greatly halts the search and discovery process for such an application as UVLayer. I also wonder how the adoption rate will be for UVLayer, as there is a two-step download process for new users, and little interaction for the application itself. If only looks could be everything! At least UVLayer recognizes the need for integration with other social networks, so hopefully the company will continue to build in this direction as it launches its service to the world.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

As is the custom in these matters, Dell has flatly denied the existence of any product to announce at 3GSM, and went further on to state that the company doesn't even plan on attending the show. Rumors of a "Gphone" were probably greatly exaggerated to begin with, and now at least the venue has been firmly shot down. That said, there was no explicit denial of an Android-related product (there never is), so the optimistic ones out there can go on hoping for a Dell phone to solve all their problems. Hey, if Garmin can do it, what's stopping them?

[Via Electronista]

 

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Zong, a mobile SMS app framework from Europe's Echovox, has cut deals with eight major US mobile carriers to enable the Zong turnkey applications and API to be used in the US.

Publishers can now use Zong apps to offer their customers polls, quizzes, alerts, RSS feeds and more via SMS shortcodes and responses. The company says its API also allows publishers to leverage web content, serve up and bill customers for a wide variety of applications beyond SMS interactions.

Zong says it will announce deals with AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile, Boost, Cellular1 and Virgin early next month. No Verizon yet, apparently.

Publishers are expected to charge customers for use of the apps and billing functionality is built into Zong. The US carriers will take 40 to 60% of revenue from the apps, Zong will take less than 10% and the publishers can pocket the rest. That sounds like the kind of revenue split that could prove viable in the long run. While a lot of the apps we'll start seeing soon will probably be pretty corny, there will be some good ones too. Good mobile apps that work are something I'm willing to pay to use.

Competitor Golife Mobile just began offering limited Java application access last week. Some comparison to Google's Android Mobile OS can't help but come to mind - but Zong is a far more limited application framework, is explicitly commercial in its relationship to end users - and it's live now. While the Android SDK has been released - the Operating System isn't live on any phones yet.

Cornerworld has acquired social media marketing company Sway Inc for $30 million.

The OTC listed Cornerworld is a relatively unknown social service provider that “combines social networking, content-sharing and business management tools to enable independent people to profit from their original digital works;” a full profile from DemoFall 07 can be found here.

Sway offers a central control platform for administering marketing campaigns across social media and “multiple web 2.0 platforms.” Their key products offer customers real-time results tracking across HTML e-mail, podcasts, video syndication, RSS and SMS mobile phone text messaging.

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There's been a lot of discussion, here and elsewhere, about the dangers that expanded government surveillance pose to civil liberties. The Constitution protects the right to be free of unreasonable searches, which the courts have held includes electronic eavesdropping, and many people, myself included, think that recent proposals for expanded wiretapping threaten that right. But less attention has been paid to the security risks created by expanded eavesdropping programs. Matt Blaze and some other computer security experts have a new article documenting the risks concerning eavesdropping systems that themselves could be compromised, allowing unauthorized third parties to use government surveillance networks for their own ends. That's what happened in Greece, when someone managed to hack into the Greek surveillance infrastructure and listen in on dozens of senior government officials. Blaze and his co-authors argue that the more information collected by a wiretapping scheme, the greater the damage that will be done if it's ever compromised. The Protect America Act, which Congress passed last August and is due to expire in a few days, authorizes virtually unchecked government interception of communications between Americans and those overseas. The paper warns that the safeguards in the Protect America Act are inadequate to protect Americans from a compromised surveillance network. Congress would do well to listen.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Facebook is using their marketplace feature to create a place for application developers and the companies that need them to connect. If you’re a developer of Facebook applications, you can post a resume of sorts, while if you’re looking to have an app built, you can describe your project and budget.

When searching for a developer or for a project, you can drill down to your various networks, but since the feature is brand new, the best option for now is just to follow the marketplace link from the Facebook Developer Homepage.

Several firms specializing in Facebook app development have sprung up since the social network launched its platform, such as FB Factory and Techligtenment. While these types of firms will still probably be the go-to for companies with a bigger budget, the marketplace should give people with good app ideas and limited funds a good centralized place to connect with others and get their project built. It should also be a good place for freelance developers to find some work.

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