The Penguin Goes Mobile

The mobile world has been talking about Linux-powered smartphones for quite some time. Although they have yet to catch on in great numbers outside Asia, Linux for mobile holds great potential as a low-cost competitor to other mobile operating systems like Symbian, Palm OS and Windows Mobile. But putting Linux on a mobile phone isn't as simple as downloading a release and installing it on your desktop, and there are several obstacles to its wider adoption — but those barriers are beginning to fall.

The attraction of Linux for the mobile space is, on one level, much the same as other smartphone OSes: it can provide a flexible, powerful environment in which advanced applications and services can be run, and it can be updated with new applications. On another level, it's attractive over the proprietary operating systems because of economics — with handset selling prices constantly dropping and manufacturer margins under continuing pressure, every dollar counts. Mobile Linux backers say it can deliver on both counts: keeping costs for manufacturers low for low-end, cheap devices since it's royalty-free, while also providing an optimal technological environment. The basic idea is that there will be a baseline version of Linux for mobile devices, and then manufacturers can layer on software to support more features and functionality in more-advanced devices.

Linux use in mobile phones has thus far largely been restricted to China, where a number of manufacturers support it. There have been a few Linux handsets released by Motorola that have made it to the West, though, and Panasonic and NEC have shipped 3G phones running Linux in Japan. Symbian remains the dominant smartphone OS, with nearly two-thirds of the market in the third quarter, according to Canalys, with Palm taking about 5% and Microsoft less than 3%. But all those Chinese phones are adding up: Linux took about 23% in the quarter, up from just 2.2% in the same period in 2004.

Smartphones still make up a small percentage of the overall number of mobile handsets sold — just roughly 13 million out of 205 million or so in the third quarter, or about 6% — but that figure is growing, and manufacturers are moving to push smartphones further down into the market, rather than just positioning them as high-end or business-focused devices. Again, that's where the flexibility of Linux comes in. It promises to allow manufacturers to standardize on a single software platform, instead of the mix of proprietary closed and smartphone OSes most now use.

That's where the biggest problem, lies, though: hammering the basic platform down into a standardized package, whether it's for a single manufacturer or industry-wide. Systems like Symbian and Windows Mobile are pretty consistent from one handset to the next, but that's not so with Linux devices. Manufacturers often have to implement their own extensions and applications that end up making different models that all run Linux incompatible with each other.

To solve that problem, though, there are a few standardization efforts. One recently-announced one is the Mobile Linux Initiative of the Open Source Development Labs, which aims to make enhancements to the Linux kernel to make it more suitable for mobile devices, particularly in terms of radio interface, security and power management — the sort of baseline issues that any operating system on a mobile phone must address. One major issue is making Linux "real-time," meaning it must be able to respond very quickly to certain interruptions, a necessity for some telephony and multimedia applications. Giving mobile Linux real-time capability means it could run in a handset with a single processor, rather than the dual-processor setup that's the norm in other smartphone OSes.

Standardization efforts like that of the OSDL are important not just to make things simpler and easier for handset manufacturers; they're crucial to generate support from the large pool of existing Linux developers to create mobile applications. J2ME was hyped with the promise of write once/run anywhere, but different implementations of it from manufacturer to manufacturer, even handset to handset, as well as technical limitations, kept that from being a reality. Other smartphone OSes and user interfaces, like Series 60 or Windows Mobile on phones offer developers a consistent environment as well as a wide range of devices capable of running their applications without having to port them for different phones. If the Linux market remains as fragmented as that of Java, the growth of third-party applications written for it will be stunted as well.

Support is growing for mobile Linux, with a number of manufacturers like Palm, Microsoft and Panasonic saying they're looking to shift some, if not most, of their product lines to it in the medium to long term. Should standardization efforts take hold and prove successful, a large number of people should soon be using Linux on their smartphones.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst who follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

Feel My Presence

The phone is a great synchronous communications device. You call people, they answer, you talk—what could be easier or more efficient? But the phone isn't so great at asynchronous communications—that is, communication that doesn't require people to be actively conversing at the same time. If you call someone and that person's not around, you leave a voicemail and the awful game of telephone tag begins. Text messages are a little bit better at the whole asynchronous thing, but there's still the expectation that messages will be returned immediately; when somebody doesn t text you back right away, you wonder why.

One of the big selling points of cell phones has always been that they allow people to be reached at any time. While this initially seemed like a good idea, plenty of people now consider it a drawback; they re tiring of the constant calls from work, the text messages from friends, or the never-ending flow of e-mails to a BlackBerry. Of course, the simplest solution is just to shut the phone off, but that s sort of an all-or-nothing proposition. What would be really useful would be some sort of status indicator with which users could state some current information—their availability, at the very least, but perhaps their location or their mood, too. This sort of user information is referred to under the umbrella term of "presence," and as communication becomes even more pervasive in our lives, it will take on great importance.

The simplest and most basic example of presence is the instant-messaging status message: "away", "do not disturb," "available," and so on. But even these have begun to evolve, with many IM programs letting users customize their message to better fit their current state (such as "in a meeting"). Skype lets users set status to "Skype Me," an open invitation for anybody and everybody on the system to chat. This message isn t just an indicator of availability—it s also a social signal that tells the world a certain user is looking to interact with fellow humans.

Another way IM status messages are becoming better indicators of presence is how they handle interaction with mobile phones. On AIM, for instance, users who have an account set up to forward messages to a phone are given the status message "mobile." This indicates not only that they're away from a computer, but that they can receive messages on a phone, so users on the other end know not to send an image or something else unsuitable for the device. This is how presence goes beyond just being a status message; it provides information so people can better suit their communications to fit the receiver's current context.

But presence can also be used to help people control incoming communications. Say I set my status to "work": this could route calls from my friends straight to voicemail, or defer their SMS or e-mails. Conversely, when my presence indicates that I'm not at work, calls from my boss or co-workers don't make my phone ring. As fixed and mobile telephone networks converge and merge with traditional Internet services, these types of rules will become necessary—not just so we can better control how people contact us, but to ensure that the right types of communications are directed to the right device.

Presence solutions exist today, but so far, few (if any) mobile operators have chosen to implement them. But they'll become more common as these operators shift to all-IP networks and VoIP. Still, there are already several applications available that offer a rough approximation of presence. Nokia's Sensor application for some of its smartphones is one. Users can create a profile in Sensor, which then searches via Bluetooth for other phones in the vicinity running the application. Users can look at other peoples' profiles and messages, then ping them with messages. It's a pretty crude example of presence, as nothing happens without an explicit action from a user (i.e. changing the profile, or scanning for other Sensor users). And, of course, it has a number of shortcomings—it only works on a small number of phones, and it's dependent on a person with such a phone actually having and running the device. Sensor does, however, illustrate what will be one of the top uses for presence services—hooking up.

Dodgeball is another service that shows some of the promise of mobile presence, again in a social setting. Users can broadcast their location to their friends by sending a message to the service indicating they're at a certain bar or restaurant—and, presumably, also indicating they want to hang out. Dodgeball sends the message, then replies if any friends or friends-of-friends are within a certain radius. Users can also add "crushes" who get notified if they check in with a location nearby. While the location element is significant, Dodgeball messages are more than that: they're "here I am, come play with me" come-ons, signaling an intent or a desire as much as a location.

So if you're overwhelmed by incoming communication, help is on the way. With so many devices making it possible to simply communicate more, presence will help us communicate better.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

It was inevitable: porn on your cellphone. While the iPod video is being hyped as the latest platform for adult content, a number of companies are convinced that someday very soon, the lion's share of mobile-porn customers will use their phones. That's because handsets are far more ubiquitous than Apple's pricey player, and they can connect to the Internet anytime, anywhere in order to download fresh content. Plus, of course, phones with increasingly sophisticated multimedia capabilities are becoming more and more commonplace.

The market for mobile adult content is expected to be about $200 million worldwide this year, but research firm Informa expects that figure to grow to $2.3 billion by 2010. Much of this growth is attributable to an explosion in available content, but the number of handsets than can access multimedia content, porn included, is growing, too. A recent Mobinet study found that 53% of handsets in the 21 countries surveyed could access multimedia services, up from 49% in 2004; in North America, the figure rose to 48% from 37%. So, as with any other new technology, from satellite to cable TV to the Internet, as penetration increases (no pun intended), so do porn sales.

So what are people spending their money on? Find out after the jump...

Porn's been available on mobile devices since the turn of the century, when Palm Pilots were the platform of choice, with stories and monochrome pictures. SMS sex-chat services are widespread in Europe, where punters with low self-esteem appreciate the luxury of not having to actually look a woman in the eye. (Many of them might be chagrined to discover that they're not texting real-life horny ladies, but rather cleverly programmed bots.)

Porn content comes in pretty much all the same flavors as any other mobile content — screensavers, wallpapers, games and even ringtones. Porn icon Jenna Jameson has her own line of "moantones", and if that doesn't float your boat, you can take things a step further with an Orgasmatone, a customized ringtone of somebody moaning your name in the throes of pleasure. But, of course, streaming and downloaded video is where the real action is, with short clips being sent via MMS, and 3G phones offering longer streaming videos.

But there are questions about the real demand for mobile pornography. While mobile phones do let people access the content from anywhere, whenever they want, most people don't necessarily need or want to get fresh porn all the time, particularly when they're out in public. But the real obstacle to the market (as with most things mobile) is the operators. They've got a love/hate relationship with adult content—they love the revenues it generates, but they hate the hassles that come along with it. As with Web porn enterprises, the operators complain about high chargebacks. Their biggest headache, though, is likely to be irate parents complaining that little Timmy saw some boobies on his phone.

Typically, operators get around the potential bad PR of being porn purveyors by not offering the content on their own portals. Instead, they let outside content providers sell to their customers on their own sites, but using the carrier's billing systems. This lets the carrier take their fee off the top, and just pass along the rest to the content provider without actually selling the material themselves. Other carriers have tried to block porn outright by using filters, though these work about as well as filters on the wired Internet. In one case, Vodafone implemented filters in the UK, and found they blocked plenty of legitimate content—including some users' Blackberry email accounts. The down side of these filters is that to get them removed from a particular user's account, the user has to prove his age to the carrier, typically by going into an operators' store and showing an ID to an employee. I doubt too many people want to go in and say, "Hi, I need to get approved so I can look at porn on my phone."

In the U.S., cellphone companies recently released a list of "Wireless Content Guidelines" they say they'll follow voluntarily. The rules include a classification scheme that will split content from their own portals into "generally accessible" and "restricted" content, and keep people under 18 away from the latter. They've also vowed not to offer restricted content until they've come up with control systems. Keep in mind, though, that these guidelines only apply to material on their own portals. To address off-portal content, they say they'll put filters in place, or allow parents to shut off access to the Internet completely for their kids' phones.

These content-control tools probably won't be any more successful than ordinary Web filters, which hardly do a scintillating job of blocking porn. But at least the carriers will have some plausible deniability, should Timmy's mom call in to complain about his being corrupted by tiny porn. The carriers will just point to their filters and other control systems and say, "Hey, look lady, we're doing all we can."

At the end of the day, though, the carriers crave the revenue that porn-driven traffic can generate. While they will make efforts to keep kids out of porn, they'll also do things to encourage its sales among adults. For now, though, they're just trying to figure out how to make the mobile equivalent of the plain brown wrapper.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

Looking For Mobile Search

Mobile search has been quietly chugging along, with all the usual suspects and a big group of startups releasing their furtive efforts without too much fanfare. Things heated up last week with with separate announcements from giants Yahoo! and Google — with Yahoo saying it was working with SBC on a branded phone built around easy access to its mobile content, while Google released Google Local Mobile, a J2ME application for accessing its local and map services.

Searching on a mobile phone is a very different animal than web search, with most searches based around some task: I'm looking for the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot, what time does the movie start, what's the weather forecast, and so on. Given the limitations of mobile devices and their user interfaces, search has to be approached very differently. Giving links to pages that might contain the information a user's looking for doesn't really work too well; returning the information directly instead is much more useful. Simply put, mobile search is a search for mobile information.

This poses a few obstacles for search providers. The first is the search interface, and the second is the type of information accessible from it. A web form isn't the best format for mobile phones, for a number of reasons: many people still don't have phones or data plans that can access the Internet, and some carriers still don't let their users outside a walled garden of mobile content they've approved. Compatibility issues are a headache, and often mean mobile sites must cater to the lowest common denominator. Google's WML search site, for instance, transcodes HTML sites to phone-friendly WML, but the result is generally pretty unintelligible. But there's an even lower common denominator than plain-vanilla WAP: the text message.

Text messaging is a pretty basic functionality that's available on just about any phone sold today. It's carrier-independent and the interface is generally familiar to people as it just uses the normal messaging application on their phone, and the types of information people typically want when they're on the go fit nicely into a text message. It also doesn't have to be a self-contained message. Yahoo!'s SMS search results include a link back to the Yahoo! Mobile site, where users can access maps, directions and other info. The SMS message can contain simple results, or it can be a jumping-off point to find more results from the mobile Internet.

But the interface doesn't have to be solely dependent on text entry, either. Most phones now have a camera, so if I see something I want more information on, why not just snap a picture of it, and have my phone look it up? Silicon Valley startup 23half has announced its nThrum application that does just that. Well, sort of — it's in beta, and currently only works with text. It's pretty straightforward: you load up the app (currently available only on some Symbian Series 60 handsets), and take a picture of some text with something you'd like to search on. The software figures out what the word is, then goes out and gets the relevant search results. It's a little finicky, but is still in beta and should improve with time. It's an interesting interface that can simplify a lot of searches.

Handset cameras will undoubtedly play a bigger role very soon in mobile search. In Japan, for instance, Amazon has released an application that reads product barcodes and delivers price comparisons. This same information is already available to US users via Froogle SMS, or by looking up the information in a phone's web browser. Needless to say, snapping the barcode image is far easier, and probably more accurate to boot. Also in the country, operator NTT DoCoMo has developed an image-recognizing ad server that lets people take pictures of ads or billboards, then compares them to a database of ads to connect the user to the relevant advertiser. So the days of snapping a picture of just about anything, then getting search results or information sent back to your phone probably aren't too far off. If you're in Japan, anyway.

Advertising drives much of the new developments in search because somebody's got to foot the bill, but what other types of information will people want to search for from their phones? Local search will remain of the utmost importance, and search providers will continue to improve their efforts in this area, particularly as handsets' location-sensing abilities improve. Remote access to personal information and data will be important, too, and some companies already have software to let mobile users search their desktop computers.

Mobile search is driven by the mobile lifestyle, which is itself still only emerging, particularly in the US. There's a fundamental difference in the way people search, and what they want from search, when they're mobile. Search providers are beginning to think like mobile users, and figure out the information people are looking for — and mobile search is picking up accordingly.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

Out of Sync

Syncing contacts is an issue that has affected nearly every mobile phone user, even if they haven't realized it. A lot of the talk about syncing involves business types trying to move their contact info from Outlook to a Treo, but the average Joe faces considerable syncing woes, too, when attempting to move numbers from old handsets to new ones. While there are solutions phone companies could implement right now—if they really cared—users basically remain on their own when it comes to moving numbers around.

Most of us have been there at some point: our old phone craps out, leaving us high and dry. The problem isn't just not being able to make and receive calls, it's that the address book on our phones has taken over for the one in our brains or elsewhere. How many numbers do you still have memorized? The last time you got a new number from someone, what did you do with it? Chances are you just entered it into your phone, typed in a name, and never really thought about it again. Is it convenient? Absolutely. But when you lose that book, you're kinda screwed.

The same goes for buying a new handset. Any joy at having a shiny new phone quickly disappears when you realize you've got to re-enter, by hand, all those names and numbers. Some phones can send business cards by infrared or Bluetooth, but they generally only let users send them one at a time. One of the supposed benefits of GSM phones (like the ones from T-Mobile or Cingular) is that you can copy contacts to the SIM card, then just swap the card into a new phone. But that solution is equally as half-assed as all the others: while most new phones can hold multiple numbers and e-mail addresses under one contact, most SIM cards still can only associate one number with one name. If a user switches carriers, of course, the SIM cards aren't much use at all, as locked handsets won't recognize SIM cards from other operators. Likewise if a phone is lost or stolen.

There are a few solutions out there that aren't totally pathetic. On the T-Mobile Sidekick, for instance, contacts on the device are synced to a user's web account. They can enter contact info on the site (or sync from a program like Outlook), and the information gets sent automatically to the device. And when a user enters new information on the device, it gets synced to the website. The backup is always there should the phone disappear or if the data gets corrupted.

These types of services exist for plenty of other types of phones, but few carriers implement them, presumably to save a few pennies. FusionOne makes one such solution it markets to both carriers and consumers, and Verizon announced last year it would offer the service—for $2 per month. If you re te DIY type, FusionOne does sell a $35 consumer version called MightyPhone, which promises to bring some iSync-like goodness to Windows users and have online backup as well. It uses a standard called SyncML that's appearing in more and more phones. It's intended to take away the compatibility problems that plagued the syncing of yore, allowing different devices from different manufacturers to share contacts.

If you're waiting for carriers to spend some cash on backup software to make your life easier, it's probably going to be a very long wait. But that doesn't mean there's no hope for the unwashed masses that go around sans Blackberry. How's that? From internet companies that seem to have a slightly better understanding of usability than mobile operators, and the emergence of the "buddy list" as the central contact info repository.

Take, for example, yesterday's news that Yahoo! is working on a phone with Cingular parent SBC. It'll be a Nokia phone that runs on Cingular's network, with Yahoo! services that people already use on the Web—like e-mail, IM, news, and all that personalized My Yahoo! Stuff—tightly integrated into the phone's software. So, if you use Yahoo! e-mail, your address book will be available, and all your preferences will carry over to the phone from the web.

The idea is service convergence. Users have all these different communications platforms they use, and they should span both the phone and the web. I might have 30 people I talk to via IM, and I probably talk to those people via phone and e-mail at times, too—so my contacts application or address book or buddy list or whatever should let me do that all from one place. I scroll down and see Tom's name, and I can then decide how I want to contact him and click accordingly. Where sync comes back into the picture is that since these services span both fixed and mobile networks, all the information has to be updated and available from any device at any time. Phone numbers are no longer isolated on an island; instead, they're part of an integrated set of communications services.

The problem, of course, is that if you don't use Yahoo! for anything, you're still out of luck. But that should change fairly soon, particularly as high-speed 3G networks become more pervasive. As mobile technology improves further, carriers implement IMS and move to all-IP networks. Communications will become more like IM—a packet-based connection between two people&mdashalthough the medium won't just be text, it could be voice, video, messaging or anything. And being able to easily communicate with people over all these different media, from a single point of contact, will be key.

Or, if you're an impatient GSM user, you can try one of those sketchy SIM card reader/writers. Maybe if you're lucky, you can find a keychain version that allows for that anywhere/anytime sync that the rest of us are waiting for.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

Hey, Your Wallet's Ringing

Device convergence in the mobile world typically means something like shoehorning an MP3 player into a handset (sometimes with hilarious consequences). But plenty of companies have have designs on cramming your wallet into your cellphone, too.

Wireless payment systems aren't all that new. The most well-known example in the US is ExxonMobil's Speedpass, which uses a little plastic cylinder on a keychain — though it's also been built into some Timex watches. The cylinder holds a tiny radio transceiver, which a user waves in front of a gas pump or reader at a cash register; and the system then bills the purchase to an associated credit card. The system is simple and easy to use, but its biggest drawback is that it can only be used at ExxonMobil gas stations. If you pull into an Amoco, you re stuck with whipping out the old-fashioned Visa or Amex.

Speedpass, then, acts as little more than a credit card replacement at one chain of gas stations. It may be a marginally useful product, but its limitations illustrate two characteristics mobile payment systems must have to really succeed: high utility and wide usability.

In other words, they ve got to do more than just replace your credit card, and they should be accepted by more than just a handful of merchants.They must be useful, both as payment replacements, but with other applications, and they must be accepted at a wide number of places. That's part of the problem with Speedpass and other similar programs. While it's helpful for ExxonMobil customers, imagine carrying a separate key fob for each brand of gas station, convenience store and supermarket—your keys would be so cumbersome, they d require their own backpack. (Of course, some retailers view the payment systems as lock-in mechanisms, an attempt to get people to shop at their stores exclusively.)

Mobile payment systems are proliferating, but it's still the early days, and (in the US, at least) a viable one is yet to emerge. One attempt, MobileLime, launched this summer, taking a slightly low-tech approach: when users go to pay at a merchant that accepts it (currently about 45 places in Boston), the user calls an 1-800 number and enter the business ID number and a PIN. They then give the merchant the last 4 digits of their phone number which is entered into the system along with the price; the money is then deducted from a prepaid account, or billed to a credit card, which then deducts it from a prepaid account or bills it to a credit card. Not particularly convenient when compared to something you just wave in front of a reader that handles the rest.

All the major credit card companies are working on contactless payment systems, and they're looking at integrating them into phones as well. One Nokia-Mastercard trial put RFID chips into handset faceplates — basically putting the SpeedPass in the phone.

But these trials still don t deliver what s necessary for a truly successful mobile payment system. Credit cards aren't always the ideal mode of payment, particularly for very small transactions —exactly the kinds of transactions where mobile payments are most useful (think buying the morning paper, or a can of soda or pack of gum). But more importantly, credit cards generally can't be adapted for applications that would make them even more useful, like doubling as subway passes, or access control equipment.

Not surprisingly, we have to look to the East to see a better way. The FeliCa system, developed by Sony and first introduced in phones by NTT DoCoMo, has emerged as the country's mobile-phone payment standard; it s also been rolled out on handsets from the country's two other carriers, KDDI and Vodafone. FeliCa's base functionality is as a payment replacement system, where users fill an account with funds then debit purchases, or connect it to various brands of credit cards. Japan s mobile carriers also helped spread FeliCa s acceptance by smaller vendors by setting up a fund to help pay for point-of-sale equipment.

But what makes FeliCa really interesting is that it's not an application; it's a platform that lets other applications run on top of it. This means that companies and developers can write their own FeliCa functions that can be downloaded to compatible phones, constantly expanding its functionality. One of the most popular applications has been to make FeliCa phones work with the Suica contactless IC ticket system of the East Japan Railway Company around Tokyo, letting people use their phones as train passes and tickets.

One application that highlights FeliCa's usefulness as a platform is the Kesaka system. At its most basic level, a FeliCa phone can be used as a key to open a Kesaka lock. But the application on the phone lets the user remotely check if the lock is open, notifies users when the lock is unlocked, and lets them distribute "duplicate keys" to other people's phones. Those dupes can then be set to expire after a certain time, as an extra security precaution.

FeliCa phones can also serve as plane tickets, loyalty cards at stores, movie tickets, and, of course, change for Coke machines. All of this is possible because of the platform approach — nearly any type of transaction or situation where someone's identity is needed to be proven can be integrated into the platform, as long as a developer makes an application for it. FeliCa, then, is not only out to replace credit cards, but everything else in your wallet too.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He’s co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

Voice over IP telephony provider Skype has developed a large and fanatical following, attracted by its ease of use and call quality. The free calls don't hurt, either — leading to plenty of questions along the lines of: "When will I be able to use Skype on my cell phone?" Which really translates to: "I want free calls on my cell phone." Add in the emergence of mobile handsets with Wi-Fi connections, and there is a growing clamor for Skype-like cheap rates on mobile phones.

There are already some solutions for the impatient, including Skype Wi-Fi phones, and kludgy hardware workarounds that require you to either stay within Bluetooth range of your PC or get a second phone with free incoming calls. For anything but expensive international calls, the savings seem hardly worth the effort.

Skype does (or at least did before its purchase by eBay) have its eye on mobile. It's already got a Pocket PC client, it's got a deal to be pre-installed on i-Mate PDAs, and its CEO has made vague statements about coming out with further smartphone versions of its software.

In the short term, though, most people aren't going to see Skype on a cell phone, let alone use it. There are technical issues: processors in phones aren't powerful enough for VoIP, and even 3G networks have too much latency and not enough bandwidth in most cases. But more pressing are the financial issues: a cell phone company will never sell you a phone — which they've subsidized — that allows users an easy way to make free calls. And, of course, the fact remains that for most people, charges for cellular data remain so high that using it to make "free" Skype calls is pretty pointless.

But even if you never intend to use Skype on your mobile phone, that doesn't mean you won't reap some of the benefits. The downward pressure Skype and other VoIP networks is exerting on call costs is forcing cell phone companies to figure out how they can utilize the technology themselves to reduce prices, but still get people to pay a premium to use the wide coverage of the mobile network — a clear advantage over trying to use a patchwork of WiFi hotspots for coverage.

There's a few different ways this will happen. The first is Skype-like free calling to users on the same network, like with Verizon's IN plan, or the free mobile-to-mobile calls on other US carriers. The second is another different way of billing, pioneered by O2's Genion service in Germany. This lets users pick a "home zone" — an area usually defined as that served by a certain cell base station and maybe a few adjacent ones — where they get free or cut-rate calls. Some of O2's German rivals have started their own versions, hoping to offer users an alternative to high landline prices, but offering a cheap, integrated service that's cheap enough so people won't turn to SkypeOut or something similar when they're at home.

In the UK, fixed provider BT has taken the idea of fixed-mobile convergence a step further with its Fusion service. It sells users a DSL connection along with a router and a mobile phone with some special software on it. The phone works as a normal GSM handset outside the home, but when within range, it connects to the router via Bluetooth and sends calls over the DSL line instead of the mobile network, at a lower cost.

BT, being a landline phone company, didn't implement everything perfectly the first time around, but plans to launch with 20 new handsets next year that use WiFi instead of Bluetooth, and it's inevitable that more carriers will offer converged services in 2006. Nokia's recently announced E-series phones feature VoWiFi technology for connecting to corporate wireless PBX systems; consumer devices that connect to home WiFi access points and make calls using the Unlicensed Mobile Access standard aren't far behind.

Will you ever have a Skype mobile phone? That's very doubtful. But there's a good chance there will be a number of devices and services on sale by the end of next year that will go some way towards merging the convenience and coverage of a cell phone with the cheap calls of Skype. The mobile equivalent of free Skype-to-Skype calls is already here, if the person you're calling uses the same cell company as you do. All of the services you'd have to pay for to make Skype a real phone replacement — SkypeIn, voicemail, and so on — are already included in pretty much every phone plan. If mobile carriers can offer cheap calls from home — even just cheap international calls, given the steadily declining price of national calls here in the US — they'll have usurped much of Skype and VoIP's cost advantage.

The idea here is convergence: converging the benefits of fixed and mobile services. While Skype and VoIP may be the disruptive force, the convergence is far more likely to happen on the mobile phone than it is on the Skype service.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.