It has taken more than five years, but the first phase of integrating mobile into enterprises is almost over. 

Enterprise mobility is evolving. The first generation of enterprise mobile solutions focused on the management of mobile devices (MDM), enabling traditional email applications and the occasional custom mobile app. It is time to take the next step. A new generation of mobile technologies is helping enterprises to reimagine entire business processes from a mobile-centric standpoint. This movement is starting to be known in the industry as “the mobile-first enterprise.” 

This is an attractive concept for most organizations. But, building the mobile-first enterprise is far from an easy endeavor. Based on our experience, this type of transformational movement is a long-term process that requires various foundational components from both the technological and organizational standpoint.

What are the elements that can help to enable the mobile-first enterprise? Some of the ideas listed below might help.

BYOD Is An Enabler, Not The End Goal

The “bring your own device” movement has become a catalyst to the evolution of enterprise mobility solutions. Empowering employees to use their own tablets and smartphones for work-related activities has become a core characteristic of the modern enterprise. 

However, most organizations are still building the required security, management and compliance infrastructure to enable a BYOD environment. To evolve, organizations must realize that BYOD by itself is just a starting point to build the mobile-first enterprise. Not the end result. 

Enabling mobile-first enterprise applications and business processes that access corporate data from personal devices in a secure and efficient manner is the true end goal of the mobile-first enterprise. 

Beyond MDM

Mobile Device Management (MDM) has been at the center of the first generation of enterprise mobile. The ability to manage and secure smartphones/tablets has been seen as a key element of any enterprise mobile infrastructure. Consequently, in recent years, the market is experiencing an explosion on the number of MDM technologies claiming to be the silver bullet to enable an enterprise mobile infrastructure.

Managing connected devices is not enough to implement mobile-first enterprise applications. Expanding beyond MDM and focusing on managing the enterprise mobile applications and the corresponding business data in your infrastructure are, arguably, more relevant capabilities to enable the mobile-first enterprise. 

Contextualizing and Mobilizing Business Data

One of the holy grails of enterprise mobile infrastructure is to enable mobile applications to leverage data hosted in corporate business systems. It may be conceptually trivial, but the process of mobilizing business data can be extremely challenging.

In order to enable a mobile-first enterprise experience, organizations need to build the infrastructure to contextualize business data so that it can be effectively consumed on enterprise mobile applications. While technologically challenging, building the infrastructure to effectively mobilize data from corporate systems can drastically simplify the experience of incrementally building enterprise mobile applications. 

Mobilizing Existing Business Processes

Some of the most successful organizations are the ones that have been able to redefine existing business processes using a mobile-first approach. In this model, traditional business capabilities – enabled via a desktop experience – will be simplified and redesigned for smartphones or tablets in order to provide an optimal productivity experience. 

Creating Mobile-First Business Processes

In addition, enterprises are starting to create new business processes to enable new business capabilities using a mobile-first paradigm. Mobile point-of-sale (POS) or mobile customer relationship management (CRM) systems are some of the best examples of mobile-first business processes being enabled in today’s enterprises. This type of mobile-centric business capabilities is a key element in the DNA of the mobile-first enterprise and helps organizations achieve greater differentiation and agility in the current mobile economy. 

Leverage Mobile-First Business Apps

The previous sections have highlighted the importance of building the infrastructure to implement new enterprise mobile apps as an essential element to enable the mobile-first enterprise. Equally important, is for organizations to invest in the infrastructure required to adopt domain-specific mobile business apps available in the marketplace. 

As the adoption of mobile technologies increases in the enterprise, we are starting to witness a new generation of mobile-first business apps that are redefining both horizontal and vertical business capabilities. Enabling the infrastructure to adopt those new mobile business apps in an efficient, secure approach tailored to your enterprise can improve the journey to the mobile-first enterprise.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

(See also: iOS 7: What You Need To Know Now)

Thing is, both perspectives are right. What Apple has shown us of iOS 7 looks like a winner to me, even if it is a retread. Read on to see why.

Innovating? Or Hunting and Gathering?

There's plenty of fodder in iOS 7 for Apple critics. Its revamped notifications and control centers smack of features found in the latest releases of Android. Its new translucent animations and system effects recall HTC's Sense 5 software, a user-interface "skin" the smartphone maker HTC puts on its phones. (Today's weather app demo was particularly egregious in this regard).)

iOS 7's new approach to multitasking? Palm did that years ago with webOS' Cards, and Microsoft did it again in Windows Phone 7.

(See also: Apple Announces Mac OS X Mavericks)

And the copying — er, homage — isn't limited to mobile software. During the OS X Mavericks demo, Apple's Craig Federighi showed off a new feature that lets Mac users look up travel directions and send them to an iPhone. Google called that "Chrome to Phone" back in 2010. And iRadio? (Sorry, make that "iTunes Radio.") It's a straight-up Pandora killer. 

A New Phone You're Already Familiar With

But here's the thing. Easy as it is for a mobile-obsessed geek like me to trace the lineage of new iOS 7 features and to call foul on Apple for passing off thievery as conception, I cannot wait to get an iPhone running iOS 7. Why? Because it looks cool and it promises up-to-date features. Perhaps most important to me, the vast majority of people I'm close it use iPhones, and frankly it's just easier to share stuff from iPhone to iPhone.

The Apple on stage today was Apple at its best. In recent years, Apple has thrived by watching market trends, identifying just what's causing consumers the most trouble, and then setting teams of expert hardware and software designers on the masses' consumer tech woes. 

(See also: Apple Releases Updated MacBook Air Laptops & A Brand New Mac Pro)

The first iPhone taught consumers how to use a new kind of device. iOS 7 — the second coming of iPhone, if you will — is going to take the training wheels off.

I switched from an iPhone to an Android phone about a year ago, largely so I could tweak my home screens more to my liking and access information and services via home screen widgets and controls. Android lets me control music (on my phone and on my home Sonos system) without launching an app; iOS 6 can't do that. So I put up with lousy Android-to-iOS messaging in exchange for rapid fire access to my tunes.

For Geeks and Moms Alike

Today Apple showed that it hasn't forgotten about users like me who want to get geeky on their phones. And it did so in true Apple fashion, by aping the innovations it's seen stick in the non-iPhone world and offering them in ways designed not to confuse the heck out of first time smartphone users. 

Apple said today that it worked hard to make all of iOS 7's new functionality easy for iOS 6 users to embrace. If it's right — and a great big pile of shareholder money says it'd better be — that means all of my relatives and friends who jumped from $40/month dumbphones to $100/month iPhones over the past years will continue to use iOS for their messaging, photo sharing, and status updating.

If Apple also did enough in iOS 7 to satiate power users, that means I might just be able to go back to an iPhone, which would make it a lot easier for me to share my messages and photos with all of those iPhone-wielding smartphone neophytes I just mentioned. Like my Mom. Embrace the quirks of my inner geek and iMessage photos to Mom, all from one phone? Hard to argue with that.

A new study, this one by Experian, shows again that when it comes to actual usage, iPhone handily beats Android, with iPhone users spending an average of 26 more minutes each day on their devices. Android users use their devices 49 minutes per day - for iPhone users, that figure is 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Win-Win-Win

While it's not clear exactly why Apple holds this advantage, that 26 minutes per day adds up to 3 hours a week, 156 hours a year - the rough equivalent of a full month of regular workdays for every user. That difference is critical in many ways, helping Apple continue to attract carriers and developers to its platform - and helps make its higher prices more palatable to consumers. 

For carriers, the iPhone's advantage in engagement makes it more valuable: more usage = more bandwidth = higher revenues. That will help Apple continue to hold carriers hostage to its hefty subsidy demands. 

For users, any additional costs of an iPhone over an Android device is more easily justified by in the additional value gleaned from the extra usage. 

For app developers, the additional usage makes the iPhone a more appealing platform for their products. These numbers should help cement iOS' pace remain the go-to platform for smartphone app developers. Just as important, as it turns out, iPhone users aren't just more engaged, they use their devices differently.

The Little Differences

A surprising datapoint from the Experian consumer study reveals that iPhone and Android users differ noticeably in how they use their devices.  

iPhone owners spend a disproportionately greater share of smartphone time than Android owners texting, emailing, using the camera and social networking.

According to Experian, 28% of the time Android users spend on their devices is dedicated to talking, whereas for iPhone users the number is only 22%. Android owners also devote a greater share of time visiting websites on their phone do than iPhone owners.

The combination of higher overall daily usage on iPhone, plus the relatively phone and Web-centric usage of Android should continue to mitigate Android's lead in the number of devices out there and convince app developers to continue to focus first and foremost on iPhone. iPhone is simply more "app centric."

Not For Video

On average, smartphone users - both Android and iPhone - spend 58 minutes per day on their device. Video watching, Experian noted, comprised a surprisingly small share of daily smartphone use. This is because only a small number - 2.3% - of smartphone owners watch video on their device "during a typical day." Of those few that do, the average time spent is 5 minutes, spread over 4.2 different sessions. 

If this pattern holds, it could diminish hopes for smartphones to serve as the "second screen." Such numbers could also place obvious limits on the revenue potential of mobile video, including YouTube. The chart below reveals the more common smartphone activities and time spent on each:

For Tim Cook, Usage Trumps Market Share

At the recent D11 Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook, when questioned about market share, stated that "winning, for us, has never been about making the most." Cook focuses instead on engagement and customer satisfaction. Given Apple's market position, there is no doubt that Cook is wise to focus on such metrics.

In market share, Android beats iPhone in the U.S. - and even more so around the world. But iPhone still wins on engagement - and needs to maintain its lead in that area if Apple wants to keep its premium position among carriers, developers and phone buyers.

The Chicago Sun-Times, a newspaper with a long and rich history, just fired its entire staff of photo journalists. It their place? The Sun-Times is going to teach every reporter the basics of iPhone photography. 

"In the coming days and weeks, we'll be working with all editorial employees to train and outfit you as much as possible to produce the content we need," said Sun-Times managing editor Craig Newman in a memo to the staff, according to media critic Robert Feder in a Facebook post.

This comes under the category of, “just because you can do something and it will be cheaper and easier, doesn’t mean you bloody well should.”

I take a lot of photos for articles with my array of smartphones. That doesn’t mean all of them are any damn good. Sometimes it can be damn hard to take a professional photograph of something with a smartphone for publication. You become a lot more aware of lighting conditions, distance, hand movement and stabilization. These are things that a good photo journalist with a decent camera just knows how to take care of to produce much better quality work than me and my point-and-shoot smartphone hack jobs.

In comparison to large newspapers, ReadWrite’s staff is small and we can only do so many things. Yet, we have a person on a photo desk (that serves other SAY Media-owned properties, as well) and we have been trying to be more proactive with original pictures and visual elements in our story. The Web is more and more a visual place, and quality photos are what make publications stand out from the dreck of social media and amateur blogs. Add in the fact that the Chicago Sun-Times actually prints a paper newspaper, and the matter becomes complicated. You ever seen a pixelated, blurry iPhone picture blown up and printed on newspaper parchment? No? There is a reason for that.

If newspapers are going to turn reporters into “backpack journalists" (where everything they need from camera, to notebooks to computer,smartphone and tablets is in  backpack), then they need to equip reporters better for photos than just a smartphone. The industry has made tremendous strides with smartphone camera technology (with Samsung, Nokia and HTC’s recent flagship smartphones all boasting terrific digital point-and-shoot apps).

For the most part though, they just aren’t going to be good enough for the professional-grade photography a major American newspaper is supposed to have. It would be better if the if the Sun-Times reporters issued high-quality digital cameras like the Samsung Galaxy Camera. They would be much better equipped to enter the fray than just with their smartphone. 

We can extend the bad decision of the Sun-Times to a variety of industries. Just because mobile might be cheaper, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is going to be better. The right tool for the right job makes everybody’s lives easier and more efficient. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, that tool is not going to be a smartphone. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

What's mobile-native news? It's an approach to delivering stories that are best designed for smartphones, mixing mobile design with varying story lengths, from sentence-long snippets to full stories. More importantly, it's an approach that incorporates the very idea of a social media-infused news environment where information is a constant barrage that must be sorted, verified and organized. With Circa, all stories evolve over time through a clever subscribing system that ensures users are never rereading information.

The Circa app has so far subsisted on larger, more traditional news outlets' original reporting to generate its articles, leading many to call the app a news summarizer, rewriter, or aggregator. But that may soon change. On Monday, the company named its first editor in chief: Anthony De Rosa, formerly the social media editor of Thomson Reuters, one of the world's most reliable and far-reaching news wires.

(De Rosa's departure follows the indictment in March of his superior, Reuters' deputy social media editor Matthew Keys, for allegedly assisting Anonymous in hacking the LA Times website. De Rosa's boss at the time, former Reuters.com editor Kenneth Li, claims that he was considering leaving before Keys' indictment.)

De Rosa, who became increasingly more prominent during his six years at Reuters through his Twitter and Tumblr influence, already has plans when he starts mid-June, and it could push the company towards its make-or-break moment as a true-blue publication. "We're too small to do original reporting initially but I intend to make that a goal down the line," De Rosa told ReadWrite via email. "If we want to go far and wide, we need to figure out how to do that in the most efficient way and that often means balancing putting boots on the ground with vetting what's out there from our own newsroom."

Evolving Over Time

Circa was launched last October by Ben Huh, CEO of the Web's sprawling meme database Cheezburger Network, along with Matt Galligan and Arsenio Santos. It also racked up an impressive list of investors, including Tumblr creator David Karp and Path co-founder Dave Morin. 

Galligan, who now serves as CEO, is not shy when it comes to establishing Circa's presence. "We're not news reader, or a news aggregator. We are a mobile news publication and we're the first one like it," he said in an interview with ReadWrite. "The way that you read a Circa story is on mobile, and the way we write is mobile-first. Our goal is to be essentially a newspaper on somebody's phone."

So what exactly makes Circa so unique? Principally, it's the app's ability to cater to the way stories now evolve over time through social media and the discovery of new information. A Circa user can subscribe to individual stories, and then receive updates on those stories as time goes on. "We're betting on the idea that we write one story and that it evolves over time. That's the way we have built and structured our company," Galligan says. 

Evolving over time is a very important concept in today's media landscape. As was clearly apparent during the frenzy surrounding the Boston bombings last month, breaking news begins breaking first on Twitter, with uploaded photos and 140-character snippets of what may or may not be verified facts that then ripple nearly everywhere. Circa's approach is to take the tools and tactics used to tackle a story of that magnitude and complexity and apply it to all its stories. Because journalism no longer fits a defined model of measurable length and finality, the idea of an article is now a fluid concept in Circa's eyes.

As stories shrink and grow depending on the amount of information available and both the platform and device a reader is using, Circa wants readers to be able to get the most important facts first, subscribe to what they're interested in and be able to check back for the more later without reading old news. "I'd say that the nature of our stories is very different as opposed to finite pieces of information," Galligan reemphasizes. 

The Future Of Mobile-Native News

For burgeoning and untraditional news sources, partnering with mainstream media giants is a prime way to expand a publication's presence and establish legitimacy, for instance when BuzzFeed paired with The New York Times last summer to tackle the Democratic and Republican national conventions (BuzzFeed also just partnered with CNN). In a world where traditional news organizations haven't yet fully grasped a mobile-native approach, Circa could be in a prime spot to take on that mantle. 

"There's definitely some benefits from the right kind of partnerships. We'll certainly explore some of those options," De Rosa says, though he stressed that that avenue is more the territory of Galligan, who was tight-lipped on any Circa partnership possibilities and stressed that Circa's focus was on growth and the long-term potential of original reporting. 

As for De Rosa's other plans as editor in chief, taking some of his social-media savvy to the editorial team is a priority. "I intend to fuse what I've learned as someone whose primary role was social media into my new position. You'll be seeing Circa out in the wild far more often," he says. "It needs to be the beacon for all news and I plan on making sure you come to us to follow any story. Social plays a huge part in that."

Circa will be launching on Android later this year, and by the time it's a cross-platform news experience, mobile-native publication could very well be what the The New York Times, CNN and every other major news outlet is desperate to capitalize on. 

Speaking today at the D11 conference in Los Angeles, Woodside teased that he had the phone in his pocket, "but I can't show it to you," and that the Android smartphone would be built in a plant near Fort Worth, Texas, fomerly used by Nokia. Woodside said the X Phone will launch "by October" along with a handful of other new Motorola smartphones.

(See Also: 4 Ways Motorola X and Sony's Xperia Z Can Still Win)

Designed to compete with high-end offerings from Apple and Samsung, Moto X will feature an organic LED display, thinner and lighter than older LCD displays, and be packed with sensors used to help the device "know what you want to do before you do," Woodside said. For example, the phone will be able to tell when it's in your pocket, in your hand, or inside of a fast-moving car, and subsequently trigger appropriate user interactions.

Woodside also mentioned that the device will be the first smartphone built in the United States, with some 70 percent of manufacturing taking place at the Texas facility. 

Image via Motorola

Think again.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers analyst Mary Meeker’s infamous Internet Trends report dropped today at the AllThingsD D11 conference in Los Angeles. Guess what? Mobile traffic still only makes up 15% of all worldwide Internet traffic. That is less than one-sixth of all time spent on the Internet. 

That means there is still plenty of work to be done and a lot of winners and losers to be determined.

We are currently in Year 6 of the Mobile Revolution (if we date the start of mass smartphone acceptance to the release of the original iPhone in July 2007). According to Meeker’s report, there are 1.5 billion smartphones users in the world, or about a 21% penetration rate of mobile users. Compared to the nearly 5 billion global cellphone users, smartphones still have a long road to climb. Believe it or not, in the big picture, smartphones are still in the early stages of adoption.

The Early Stages Of Mobile Adoption

If we start to break down the geographic demographics, some familiar trends emerge. For instance, the U.S. has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world: 219 million smartphone users, 58% of the consumer public. China, too, has a huge smartphone subscriber base, far and away the highest volume in the world at 354 subscribers (yet just 29% of total consumer base). Japan has the highest smartphone penetration rate: 76% with 94 million users. 

Then the's the middle ground of countries that have begun adopting smartphones but have not quite reached critical mass. France is at 46% of total mobile subscribers and Germany only 29%. Italy is at 23% and Spain 33%. We tend to think of Western Europe as resembling the United States in its technological preferences, but the Mobile Revolution has clearly not spread as far and fast as we might think. 

Other parts of the world hold even more potential: With 67 million smartphone users, India is only at a 6% subscription rate. Indonesia is at 11% while Russia and Mexico are only in the teens, at 12% and 19%, respectively. 

What's Next For Mobile?

Obviously there is exceptional potential for continued mobile growth. Google is leading the charge, focusing on extending its Android operating system (and through it, Google services) to as many countries as possible. Since its first smartphone in 2008, Android has seen 900 million activations. Google has expanded its Google Play Android app and content store to 134 countries worldwide and is focused on bringing the mobile Internet to Africa and Asia by building out cellular infrastructure in those regions. 

Apple has fared very well in China, with the company posting its highest iPhone growth rates in the country for several quarters. 

If there is really a remaining battle in the Smartphone Wars, it has less to do with Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft vs. BlackBerry and more to do with the race to connect the rest of the world to the Internet through mobile. The company that can best figure out how to solve that diverse and complex global problem will be in a great position to succeed for the decade to come.

But here's another thing to remember: All of mobile's growth lines point straight up. As more and more of the world scrambles to connect through mobile devices, there could be a place for nearly everybody to succeed in the mobile marketplace. 

Top image: Samsung Galaxy S4

Implement a strong BYOD policy, Cisco says, and your organization could save $1,300 per year per mobile user. Users meanwhile, report that they are happier and more productive - even though they may end up paying more out of their own pockets!

(See also Worried Workers: BYOD Or You're SOL [Infographic])

Happier, More Productive, But Poorer?

The survey, released Wednesday by Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) consulting unit, polled 2,415 users in six countries to determine the effects of letting employees bring their own devices into the office. The results indicate that employees around the world were very interested in BYOD, and they were even willing to pay for it: On average, workers said they would spend $965 out of pocket for their own devices and another $734 annually for the data plans to go with them.

Here's why: Workers with their own devices said they were happier and (more objectively) reported significant productivity gains. In the U.S., BYOD participants saved 81 minutes of time per week - just over 70 hours a year.

Not every country noted such productivity increases, and use of employee devices also had negative effects, such as increased administration, downtime and distractions that dragged the overall efficiency down, explained Jeff Loucks, senior manager at IBSG. 

Most of the devices in question were phones: 81% of device bringers reported they uses smartphones, 56% brought tablets and 37% brought their own laptops. On average, each of the estimated 198 million BYOD users around the world had 1.7 devices, said Loucks.

BYOD Keeps Growing

The number of BYOD users is expected to swell to 406 million by 2016. Even though the U.S. leads in BYOD use right now, by 2016, China alone is expected to have 166 million alone, compared to the 106 million in the U.S. and 76 million in India.

Companies fared best, Cisco discovered, when they implemented a strategic BYOD plan, rather than stick than just trying to keep up with devices coming into the organization. Such reactive policies tend to make users figure everything out for themselves, often working with an IT department that only grudgingly allows such devices into the organization.

Want to realize those promised cost benefits? Get ahead of users with a proactive BYOD policy that enables employees to quickly access corporate tools and data, perhaps featuring a self-service help system. Such policies also help organizations keep better security on corporate data.

(See also ReadWrite Survey Results: What A Typical BYOD Program Really Looks Like.)

Be Careful What You Wish For - BYOD Edition

As much as workers seem willing to pay their own way to get the devices they want without their employers' interference (only 30% said they would be willing to work with corporate-provisioned devices - often called Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled, or COPE), it's hard to shake the feeling that even though employees are more satisfied and productive, there's something unsettling if they end up footing the bill for this innovation. 

(See also Forget Bring Your Own Device - Try Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled.)

It's not an idle question: A recent Gartner survey of CIOs found that 38% said their companies planned stop providing employees with devices by 2016. Gartner also expects that nearly 50% of employers will demand employees provide their own devices for work purposes - out of pocket - by 2017.

Companies are increasingly willing to explore BYOD policies - but it seems that the reasons may not be entirely altruistic. Letting employees use the tools they prefer is clearly a good idea, but making them pay for the privilege doesn't seem right. 

When Nokia decided to jump off its burning platform a few years ago and go with Windows Phone, there were no people more disappointed with the decision than the hundreds of engineers that had been working on the company’s own mobile operating system, MeeGo.

These were developers that had put in countless hours to make MeeGo the platform of the future and the initial results were intriguing. The Nokia N9 was a beautiful phone (its core design would eventually be the basis of the first Nokia Windows Phone, the Lumia 800) with interesting functionality that, at the time, bested Android in utility. When Nokia scrapped MeeGo, these developers were out of a job and, worse, had the rug pulled out from under a beloved project.

So, they banded together to keep the project going. And the result is Jolla, a smartphone from Finland running an operating system called Sailfish, born on the legacy of MeeGo.

What Is Jolla?

Pronounced “yo-la,” Jolla as a company is the continuation of the “Mer” project. The Mer project was initially a fork from the Linux-based MeeGo designed to bring as much of the old Maemo operating system (MeeGo was formed as a conglomeration between two operating systems, Maemo and Moblin) to Nokia’s hardware as possible. Mer was eventually suspended when most of the development resources started going to MeeGo.

When Nokia dropped support for MeeGo, the Mer project was resurrected. It was intended to provide a new environment for the many developers and engineers who had worked on the open-source project, from Nokia or elsewhere. MeeGo itself morphed when it was began being supported by the likes of the Linux Foundation (backed by Intel and Samsung among others) and became Tizen. 

These old Maemo engineers just won’t admit defeat to their original dream and just realize that MeeGo/Maemo is, for all intents and purposes, dead. So now we have Jolla and a prototype smartphone searching for an audience.

The Jolla Smartphone

The first Jolla smartphone is a 4.5-inch, dual-core, 4G LTE enabled device with 16GB of internal storage and a replaceable battery. It runs the gesture-based Sailfish OS which, presumably, will operate a lot like the old Nokia N9 based on MeeGo Harmattan. 

Jolla is now available for pre-order and will be shipped first to European countries. The price tag is a reasonable €399 and Jolla expects to begin shipping by the end of 2013. Basically, Jolla is now asking people to support the project through pre-orders in a very Kickstarter-like fashion, imploring the community to get behind the project, or “The Tribe,” as Jolla co-founder Marc Dillon describes it. 

Based on Linux, Sailfish OS will be compliant with Android apps. This will allow Sailfish OS developers (the very small handful that currently exist) to port Android apps to Jolla, much in the same way that BlackBerry developers can port Android package files (APKs) to BlackBerry 10. 

The Drawback Of Open Source Democratization

Developers often complain that Android is a fragmented ecosystem. Too many different CPUs on different screen sizes from different manufacturers to make sense of it all. Yet, if you compare Android to what happened to the MeeGo community, Google’s mobile operating system seems tame.

Android always had a champion in Google to keep it on point. This contrasts with the Maemo/Moblin/MeeGo/Tizen/Jolla community that has had so many competing interests and egos that development has never really produced anything tangible other than a few interesting prototypes (like the Nokia N9 and now Jolla).

The Jolla group is essentially the most disillusioned of them all. Some have also called them the most creative and innovative while also being the most stubborn and arrogant. And now this team, finally, has what it wants – its own company and smartphone.

That phone was the HTC G1, the original "Google Phone." It was a clunky, bug-ridden touchscreen device with a slide-out physical keyboard. The G1 did not sell particularly well. The buzz at the time was over Apple's still relatively young iPhone and varying BlackBerry devices, like the original Bold 9000.

Let's not say that the G1 was the beginning of the Mobile Revolution. There are neither beginnings nor endings in the turning of the wheel of technology. But it was a beginning.

The beginning of the Android Era.

It is amazing to look back at the last five years of Android and see just how far the devices that run Google's mobile operating system have come. From the G1 to the Nexus 10, the hardware, software and everything in between has gone from buggy, crash-prone phones to finely tuned devices that dominate mobile computing. Google and its manufacturing partners have done well in a half decade of innovation. What will the next five years bring?

Google is expected to announce a new version of its Android mobile operating system at its I/O developers conference, which runs Wednesday through Friday this week. Google refreshed its flagship Nexus line in November, and new Android chief Sundar Pichai recently downplayed expectations for major new products at I/O, a change from last year, which saw major launches like the Nexus 7 tablet.

Instead, in a sign of Android's maturation, Google will likely put the focus on devices from its hardware partners, like Samsung and HTC—a sign of Android's increasing maturity as a platform. Let's take a look back at the devices that brought Android to this pivotal point in its history.

HTC G1

Released: October 22, 2008

Hardware: 3.2-inch screen (320x480), 1150 mAh battery (removable), slide-out physical keyboard, 256 MB internal storage (expandable external storage), 192 RAM, 3.2 megapixel back camera.

Firmware: Android 1.0

The G1 (also known as the HTC Dream) was the first of Google's flagship smartphones. At the time it was a bit of a curiosity, mostly interesting for how it introduced Google properties (like Maps, Street View, Calendar and Search) to the smartphone market. The G1 was limited to T-Mobile in the United States.

Motorola Droid

Released: October 17, 2009

Hardware: 3.7-inch screen (480x854), 1400 mAh battery (removable), slide-out keyboard, 512 MB internal storage (expandable external storage), 256 MB RAM, 5 MP back camera.

Firmware: Android 2.0 (Eclair)

Boom goes the dynamite. The Motorola Droid was the first true Android smartphone to be popular with the masses. It was released to Verizon with heavy marketing targeted at what the Droid could do that an iPhone could not, like multi-tasking. The "Droid Does" slogan became a popular part of the geek lexicon and was Motorola's high water mark in the smartphone wars. The Droid shipped with the original Android 2.0 "Eclair" version but was quickly updated to a much more stable version in Android 2.1.

Nexus One

Released: January 5, 2009

Hardware: 3.7-inch screen (480x800), 1400 mAh battery (removable), 512 MB internal storage (expandable), 512 MB RAM, 5 MP back camera.

Firmware: Android 2.1 (Eclair)

The Nexus One was the first Android device commissioned directly from Google to serve as the flagship of the operating system. The One was built by HTC (an altered with HTC's "Sense" skin for its Incredible smartphone) and immediately became the sexiest Android smartphone on the market. The Nexus series has since become known as the "guide" device for new versions of the operating system. The Nexus One also marked an experiment by Google to bypass the carriers and sell directly to consumers through its website. The One was also one of the first Android smartphone to ship with Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality. This experiment did not take among consumers and most subsequent Nexus devices were offered through Google alongside subsidized versions from the likes of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint. Google did not release a Nexus device for Android 2.2, with updated firmware for the Nexus One serving as the de facto flagship for Froyo.

Nexus S

Released: December 16, 2010.

Hardware: 4-inch screen (480x800), 1500 mAh battery (removable), 16 GB internal storage, 512 MB RAM, 5 MP back camera, VGA front camera.

Firmware: Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)

Samsung really started its rise to the top of the Android pyramid in 2010 with the release of its wide-ranging Galaxy S smartphones. Google tapped the Korean manufacturer for the next two Nexus devices, starting with the Nexus S. The device was the flagship for Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which is still the most-used version of the operating system years after its release.

Motorola Xoom

Released: February 24, 2011.

Hardware: 10.1-inch screen (800x1280), 6000 mAh battery (non-removable), 32 GB internal storage, 1 GB RAM, 5 MP back camera, 2 MP front camera.

Firmware: Android 3.2 (Honeycomb)

Google took a break from the Nexus line with Android 3.2 Honeycomb and went with Motorola for the flagship device of the operating system. Honeycomb and the Xoom turned out to be a complete albatross in the Android ecosystem, never gaining traction with consumers or developers. In fact, Honeycomb was so lampooned for being "half-finished" that Google never even released the normally open source Android kernel code and very few devices were ever made that used the operating system. Honeycomb was supposed to be Google's answer to the Android tablet conundrum. To this point, the only Android tablets that had been released ran some version of Froyo or Gingerbread, Android versions that were suboptimal for large screen devices. Honeycomb ultimately served as the stepping stone between Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich, which married the smartphone and tablet capabilities of Android and made it much easier for developers and manufacturers to create applications for a variety of screen sizes. 

Galaxy Nexus

Released: November 17, 2011.

Hardware: 4.65-inch screen (720x1280), 1750 mAh battery (removable), 16/32 GB internal storage (no external memory), 1 GB RAM, 5 MP back camera, 1.3 MP front camera.

Firmware: Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

In many ways, Android phones made a giant leap at the end of 2011. Screens started to get bigger (eventually much bigger) and Android got a lot smarter, easy to use and out of its own way. This was epitomized with the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich. Android can almost be categorized into two phases: Android 2.3 Gingerbread and everything that came before and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and everything that came after. Starting with the Galaxy Nexus, Android smartphones have run smoother, been more secure, had bigger screens and hardware specifications that are all almost nearly double what came before.

Nexus 7

Released: July 13, 2012.

Hardware: 7-inch screen (800x1280), 4325 mAh battery (non-removable), 8/16/32 GB internal memory (no external memory), 1 GB RAM, 1.2 MP front camera.

Firmware: Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)

The first Nexus tablet was announced at Google I/O in June 2012 and shipped a couple weeks later. The Nexus 7 cemented the market for lower priced tablets (next to the Kindle Fire at $199) with smaller screens in the 7-inch variety. From a hardware point of view, the Nexus 7 was not the most sophisticated tablet ever to be released, but it showed that Android has the ability to seamlessly run on tablet-sized screens while also highlighting the capabilities of Jelly Bean as a tablet operating system. Google refreshed the Nexus 7 later in the year to give it cellular connectivity. 

Nexus 4

Released: November 13, 2012.

Hardware: 4.7-inch screen (768x1280), 2100 mAh battery (non-removable), 8/16 GB internal memory, 2 GB RAM, 8 MP back camera, 1.3 MP front camera. 

Firmware: Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)

The latest Android firmware is version 4.2, the second instance of Jelly Bean (much in the same way that Android 2.0/2.1 were both Eclair). The Nexus 4 from LG was released at the end of 2012 with two other devices -- the Nexus 10 from Samsung (below) and the upgraded Nexus 7. As yet, adoption of Android 4.2 has been minimal as it is an iterative update to what already existed in Android 4.1, with some minor feature upgrades. While many people consider the Nexus 4 to be a superb instance of an Android smartphone, it was criticized for its lack of 4G LTE, of which most new smartphones have included by default. The phone was made available through Google Play store (along with it tablet siblings) and on T-Mobile.

Nexus 10

Released: November 13, 2012.

Hardware: 10.05-inch screen (1600x2560), 9000 mAh battery (non-removable), 16/32 GB memory, 2 GB RAM, 5 MP back camera, 1.9 MP front camera.

Firmware: Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)

Samsung came back to produce the first branded large-screen (8-inches or up) Nexus tablet with the Nexus 10. The tablet was the first large screen to roll out with a flagship Android update since Motorola released the Xoom tablet with the Honeycomb release in February 2011. 

What will this week bring at Google I/O 2013? Will we finally see Android 5.0? Or is there another update to Jelly Bean (Android 4.3)? We will be everywhere at I/O next week bringing you news of Google's latest gadgets, apps and developer news. Stay tuned.

[See Also: Where Does Amazon Fit in the Game of Phones?]

An Amazon lab in Cupertino, Calif. (where Apple is also headquartered), is reportedly working on a variety of devices for the e-commerce giant. These could include additions to its Kindle Fire lineup of tablets and Kindle e-readers, set-top boxes for streaming television shows and movies and the long-rumored Amazon smartphones. Various efforts at the lab has names like Project A, Project B and so forth and are supposedly known as the "Alphabet Projects." 

[See Also: What The Kindle Fire Says About Amazon's Whispered Phone]

The WSJ notes that, "some or all of the devices could be shelved because of performance, financial or other concerns." So there is no guarantee we'll see an Amazon smartphone this year, if ever. 

[See Also: Is Amazon Jumping Into The Smartphone Game?]

It's a pretty clear trend, if you look at the infographic provided by eDigitalResearch and IMRG. In 2010, when smartphones had only penetrated 38% of the UK market, 63% of smartphone owners were men and 37% were women. Contrast that with 2013, when smartphones hold 60% of the UK user base, and you have 58% female smartphone users and 42% male.

Older consumers are owning smartphones, as well, as the devices move from purely business use to consumer ownership. In 2010, a little under a third of all smartphones were owned by people aged 45-74. It's a little hard to get an exact percentage from the displayed pie chart, but in 2013 that age group now makes up about 45% of the overall smartphone population.

That stats show other interesting phenomena in the UK: the rise of browsing as a smartphone activity, as well as the fall of Nokia and the rise of Apple and Samsung as smartphone manufacturers sold in the UK.

Take a look at the infographic below to see other stats from across the pond.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Even the savviest hardware makers are bumping up against the limits of what they can extract from existing battery technology. They're forced to spend enormous efforts creating various engineering "cheats" to coax out the maximum battery life and performance for our most favored gadgets.

Despite frenzied research into both battery hardware and power-management software, the best you can say is that the industry is almost managing to keep up with the demand for more and more portable power. 

10 Times Better Than Today's Batteries

Finally, help may be on the way.

According to a recently published article in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at the University of Illinois claim to have developed lithium ion microbatteries with power densities up to "2,000 times" more powerful than comparable batteries. Or more helpfully, technology that could support batteries either 10 times smaller or 10 times more powerful than today's typical lithium-ion batteries. 

Professor William P. King, who led the university team, clearly has high hopes for the battery technology. In a statement, he said:

In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small. And the battery has lagged far behind. This is a microtechnology that could change all of that. Now the power source is as high-performance as the rest of it.

"You could jump-start a car with the battery in your cellphone," the researchers crow in their report. They also claim their battery tech can be recharged 1,000 faster than today's batteries. Put it all together and you could theoretically have a "credit-card-thin phone" that could be recharged in less than a second. 

The new battery tech remains in the labs, however, although the team hopes to trial it in commercial settings later this year. If viable, it could revolutionize the market for consumer mobile electronics such as smartphone and tablets - and spur a new outpouring of innovative hardware and screen designs. 

How Does It Work?

In simple terms, a chemical reaction inside a battery causes the anode to release electrons. When the battery is "on" these electrons flow from the anode to the cathode - which is on the opposite side of the battery. The University of Illinois team claims its breakthrough "integrates the anode and cathode at the microscale." Meaning, this allows for even a very small battery to have a "very high surface area" - and thus provide far greater power density (output) and simultaneously support much faster charging.

Battery Life Is Everyone's Problem

Battery performance continues to limit what smartphones and other mobile devices can do. Apple maintains a webpage devoted solely to helping customers improve battery life of their iPads. The company suggests users "update to the latest software," "use your iPad regularly" and 15 other actions to boost battery life, including "let it breathe." Seriously.

In 2012's J.D. Power smartphone satisfaction survey, "battery life" was listed as "a significant drain on customer satisfaction and loyalty." J.D. Power even noted that battery issues for smartphones resulted in "higher rates of merchandise returns and customer defections."

Is It Safe?

The new microbattery could help solve those problems, if they don't catch on fire. The BBC quoted University of Oxford chemist Peter Edwards wondering if the technology could meet the competing demands of cost, manufacturing scalability and safety:  

I'd want to know if these microbatteries would be more prone to the self-combustion issues that plagued lithium-cobalt oxide batteries which we've seen become an issue of concern with Boeing's Dreamliner jets.

Here's hoping the team at Illinois, or one of the many other groups working on this problem, achieve a commercially viable - and safe - battery breakthrough soon. I hate it when my iPhone runs out of power just when I need it most.

Lead graphic representation of new battery technology courtesy of the University of Illinois.  

Verizon's wireline FiOS revenue for pay TV and Internet leaped 15.1% higher in the prior quarter, up to $2.6 billion. That figure is especially telling, given that Verizon FiOS hasn't expanded into any new markets lately. Verizon's pay-TV service seems to be figuring out how to get more customers out of the markets it's already in, probably to the detriment of other cable and satellite providers in the same markets.

"FiOS continues to make inroads in the internet and video markets taking away share from the cable companies," Roger Entner, Lead Analyst and Founder of Recon Analytics commented.

All told, FiOS added 169,000 new customers to its TV plans, and 188,000 new Internet customers. The lack of decline in users broadly demonstrates that there still hasn't been a mass "switch-off" from pay TV providers, as these businesses are still showing signs of growth.

Verizon did pretty well in the wireless side of its business, too, pulling in $19.5 billion in revenue, up 6.8% from the first quarter of 2012. The company also noted that per-account revenue went up 6.9% from this time last year, a sure indicator that more customers were signing up for those hefty data plans.

They'll need those data plans, too - for the second straight quarter the iPhone made up more than 50% of smartphone sales, clocking in at 55.5%. Since smartphones made up for 61% of contract user sales that means 33.9% of all phones sold to Verizon Wireless contract users were iPhones.

The story of Verizon's first quarter earnings is very much one of in-market attrition - they are building revenue by offering plans and services that customers like, and still increase Verizon's bottom line.

"Verizon is firing on all cylinders. In an increasingly saturated market, the company is accelerating subscriber, revenue and profit growth. The ShareEverything plan is being received enthusiastically by consumers," Entner added.

The growth of smartphone sales over feature phones is something businesses should continue to note as well, since it effectively means the target audience for reaching mobile users is still getting bigger, just like everyone predicted.

It's a perfect circle, in a way, as more smartphone customers participate in commerce and social interaction with their devices, Verizon and its competitors will continue to see smartphone growth… which will in turn spark the availability of more commercial services. Today's earning report is part of the turning of this mobile commerce wheel, which shows no signs of slowing.

Coupled with the growth of its wireline FiOS service, Verizon is sitting pretty in the marketplace now.

You may not know this, but panic attacks are surprisingly common. According to a study backed by the National Institutes For Health (NIH), 1 in 8 Americans will experience a panic attack at least once during their lifetime. 

Perhaps any smartphone would help, or even any device capable of creating both distractions and social connections. For me, though, having my iPhone always nearby, always on, its many features and functions ready to occupy my mind, my eyes, ears and fingertips, is often enough to reduce the onset of an attack. The device seems to draw out, bit by bit, all those fears, worries and repetitive patterns that used to conspire to throw me into despair, fear and then panic.

If it really is the iPhone that's helped mitigate my symptoms, and I believe it is, then perhaps others who suffer from similar attacks - and own a smartphone - can also find some relief.

What Is A Panic Attack?

The Mayo Clinic defines a panic attack as:

A sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, you might think you're losing control, having a heart attack or even dying.

In a panic attack, the overwhelming sense of fear, as real as it is inexplicable, wreaks havoc not only on your psyche but on your daily contribution to the world. An attack can strike seemingly at random: at home, with friends at a bar, at work, standing in line at Starbucks; anywhere, anytime. That's what makes them so debilitating. 

Twice, I went to the hospital, convinced my symptoms meant an impending drop-dead heart attack. Both times I was told I was not having a heart attack. Eventually, I was diagnosed as suffering from anxiety disorder - which can lead to panic attacks. 

To treat anxiety, doctors recommend exercise, meditation, more sleep and visualization techniques. For those who suffer full-blown panic attacks, professional help is suggested, as is medication. I was prescribed Prozac. Since getting an iPhone, however - though my case absolutly may not be typical - I have been able to gradually reduce my daily Prozac to its lowest available dosage. I expect to soon be off it entirely. I have also stopped seeing a therapist.

Using The iPhone To Improve My (Mental) Health

The potential for the iPhone to aid physical healthcare delivery and diagnostics is well documented. The market for smartphone tools that aid mental health is far less robust. But they do exist. For example, the iPhone app Viary, leverages traditional cognitive behavior therapy techniques:

Together with a therapist, Viary’s clients choose specific actions that will help them achieve a desired goal. For example a client may decide that exercising, eating healthier food, and listening to classical music makes them feel less depressed. Viary sets reminders for these behaviors - walk for 15 minutes every morning, take a vegetarian lunch, tune into some Beethoven etc, - and the app then collects data on these completed actions. Therapists or coaches can then monitor a client’s progress in real time and even respond. 

For me, however, I'm convinced that simply possessing an iPhone has improved my mental health. No matter what symptom crops up, using the iPhone helps calm me down and makes me feel more connected. If I feel inexplicably worried, no matter where I am, no matter who I am with - and this is out of necessity - I pull out my iPhone and start texting. I later apologize to those I am with.

If I feel alone, I call someone. If I get angry, I play a game - preferably online, with friends. When I am bored, I read on my Kindle app. When I can't get a song out of my head, I take to Twitter. If my breathing seems off, I make reminder lists of what I need to do for the day, the week, the rest of my life. If the feelings persist, I open Evernote and scroll through all the notes that have a "thankful" tag attached to them.

If I feel like I can't leave the house, I check my Fitbit app, find out how many steps I've taken that day, then tell myself I will go outside just long enough to add 1,000 more to my total. This usually works. 

Sometimes, when things get really dark, I scroll through my photos, which makes me happy. If that's not enough, I make notes to myself of everything I am grateful for - then email them, knowing my wife can later access the account. 

And when I feel good, good enough even to help others, I sit in the sun, pull out my iPhone and write a blog post. Like now.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

What Is A Voice Ad?

Wanting in on the booming mobile ad market, Nuance developed a way for people to chat with ads much as they do with Siri on the iPhone. Called Voice Ads, the technology works off the Internet connection of any iOS or Android mobile device.

Voice-recognition software has been around for years, but remains relatively immature as a form of communication between humans and computers. Founded in 1994, Nuance has been developing the technology longer than most other companies. Nuance's technology reportedly powers Apple's Siri, although neither company will confirm it.

Nuance's voice-ad technology is available today through the mobile ad frameworks of Jumptap,  Millennial Media and Opera Mediaworks. An ad framework is what developers embed into their mobile apps, so they can display advertising distributed by an ad network.

Advertisers using Nuance's software development kit could build two-way communications requiring only "Yes" and "No" answers - or ones with more complicated responses. An example of Voice Ads can be seen on YouTube.

The development process is not self-service, though. Ad developers have to work directly with Nuance to connect the advertising to the company's voice-recognition servers over the Internet. And because the technology is so new, it isn't supported in third-party rich-media ad creation tools, except Celtra.

Talking To Ads Could Make Sense

In many ways, Voice Ads make sense on a smartphone. Why fiddle with clicking on tiny links and trying to type on a 4-inch screen, when you can click once and start talking with a brand?

As people get comfortable talking to their smartphones through personal assistants like Siri, it's possible they could be enticed into starting a conversation through a product discount or promotional pricing. According to Nuance, advertisers see lots of potential.

"When you actually have a live conversation with an ad, it's sort of like you're creating more of a tight relationship with the brand itself, because you're having a discussion with it," said Peter Mahoney, chief marketing officer for Nuance. "The brand feels more responsive. It feels like something you can actually have a real live relationship with."

While the thought of having a "tight relationship" with an ad may sound absurd, there is big money at stake. Worldwide mobile advertising revenue is expected to hit $11.4 billion this year, reaching $24.5 billion by 2016, according to Gartner. 

The key is the quality of the experience. Nuance's technology will have to convince people they are actually having a meaningful, two-way conversation. Advertisers will have to give potential customers something in return for having that conversation with a brand.

Speech is continuing to evolve as a means of communication with computers. As people get used to talking to the machines they use in their everyday lives, the jump to talking to an ad may not seem so extreme.

Image courtesy of ShutterStock.

The Hype Was Heavy

Would it be new "skin" software designed to put Facebook front and center on any Android device? Or an actual device in of itself - the rumor mill suggested HTC - built from the ground up to feature the social networking giant. Or would it be something completely new and unexpected?

Everyone wanted to know. Heck, the local newsradio station - not known for its tech savvy - gushed breathlessly about the event - right before talking about President Obama's visit to the Bay Area.

But when Mark Zuckerberg walked on stage, it became clear we're talking about both! "Today we're finally going to talk about the Facebook phone," Zuckerberg said. But that phone, the HTC First, is really just a reference model for the best integration of the Facebook Home software that can be downloaded onto any modern Android phone (starting April 12).

What Is Facebook Home?

According to Zuckerberg, Facebook Home consists of a few key capabilities designed to put people, not apps, first. "Today, our phones are designed aroundapps, not people" Zuckerberg said. "And we want to flip that around." He compared the change to adding Newsfeed to Facebook's website, where people started consuming about twice as much content overnight, he said. "We want to bring this experience right to your phone, and deliver it to as many poeple as possible."

There are three key components: Cover Feed, Chat Heads and Notifications.

Cover Feed: Replacing the home and/or lock screen of an Android device, it gives you an immersive experience from the moment you turn on your phone, said Adam Mosseri, Facebook's director of product. Instead of seeing a clock and maybe a snippet of a notification, you see your Facebook Open Graph stories with large images cycling across the screen. News shares, status updates (use the poster's cover photo as the background) are visible right from the get got. You can do a long press to see the whole picture or swipe to get to the next one. You can even add comments right from the home screen, seen below.

Chat Heads: These little round bubbles with the images of your friends shown below are the metaphor for Facebook Home's way of keeping you up to date on what your friends are saying. Incorporating Facebook messaging and texting, you just tap on the Head to join the conversation. (Group conversations smuch all the participant's pictures into the bubble, slightly awkwardly.) The key here is that Chat Heads show up everywhere on the phone, not just in a dedicated app. They're always available - the little Heads show up in the corner of the screen no matter what else you're doing, and follow along when you move to a new app. (You can just flick them away if you want to get rid of them.)

Notifications: If Chat Heads are about connecting to what's important to you, Zuckerberg said, Notifications are there to make sure you don't miss critical information - along with the name and face of the person who's sending you the message. Unfortunately, with the download version at least, Facebook Home will not support notifications of emails, but you can still use the native Android notification bar. It's not as pretty, but it's still effective - something may not matter to high-school kids, but it may to the older professionals who also make up a big part of Facebook's member base.

Finally, Facebook Home adds a new app launcher, for when you still want to use your phone the old-fashioned way. Apps are really important too, so we wanted to make it just as easy to get to your apps. The app launcher is just one swipe away from your home or lock screen.

Many, but not all, of these features can be switched on or off, the company said.

How Big A Deal Is Facebook Home?

While Facebook home is not a complete mobile operating system, it's not some lightweight app, either. "We're not building a phone, and we're not building an operating system, but we're also building something a lot deeper than just an app," Zuckerberg said. "We wanted this to feel like system software, not just an app that your run. We feel like theres a higher bar for that…"

That's critical, because people spend a lot of time on Facebook on their mobile phones. Some 20% of the time people spend on their smartphones is spent with Facebook - 25% if you include Instragram, the company said. And that's three times as much as with any other app.

Still, while Zuckerberg claimed that people look at Facebook 10-12 times a day, they look at the home screen of their phone 100 times a day. Facebook Home brings the social network much closer to the user - and could be expected to seriously up Facebook's engagment time for those who use it.

It also expands on Facebook's Mobile First mantra to what Zuckerberg called "Mobile Best." "We think this is the best version of Facebook there is."

The Facebook Phone

Facebook Home will be available for free download from the Google Play store on April 12, but that's only part of the story. Facebook Home is also the HTC First (seen on the left, below), available the same day for $99.99 exclusively from AT&T - pre-orders start today.

As the first phone with Facebook Home built in, the HTC First offers deeper integration than the downloadable version. The key, Zuckerberg said, is that users don't have to download anything or sign in to anything to get started. In addition, the built-in integration means Facebook Home can (unlike the downloadable version) incorporate notifications from other apps, such as email or Spotify. The email issue, particularly, will be a big deal to some people.

What's Next For Facebook Home?

The April 12 launch date is only the beginning for Facebook Home. Zuckerberg promised that like all Facebook software, it will be updated monthly (not yearly like mobile operating systems). Updates will likely expand Cover Feed to include video, group joins, friending stories and other actions.

Another thing to expect? Ads. While Zuckerberg said there would not be ads in Cover Feed at launch, he didn't dispute a question that they could be added at a later date.

It also makes sense to expect more smartphones with Facebook Home built in. The company made no mention of an exclusive arrangement with HTC or AT&T. The company also promised a tablet version of Facebook home within the next few months. As for a version of Facebook Home for the iPhone and iPad, Zuckerberg was non-committal. That will require working with Apple, he said, in ways that talking to Google wasn't necessary to do the Android version.

And that could actually make some waves in the mobile platform wars. "I actually think this is really good for Android," Zuckerberg said. Even though there are more Android phones out there, he explained, a lot of people do their best work on iphone first. "This could bring more innovation to Android."

Facebook will be working to lead that. "This is a deeply technical problem, and its also a deeply social problem," Zuckerberg said, adding that his company is uniquely positioned to deal with that combination.

Images courtesy of Facebook. Lead image by Fredric Paul.

The big question is why the widely praised platform isn't catching on. Microsoft, relatively early to the mobile Web, came to the smartphone party late, and has failed to make its case why anyone - hard-core PC users included - should choose Windows Phone over Android or iPhone - or even BlackBerry.

The Blame Game

For years, Bill Gates spoke of a world of slates, smartphones and smart mobile devices - only to have Microsoft repeatedly fail to capitalize on that vision. 

Misstep #1: It's hardly necessary to quote Steve Ballmer's snide and foolish 2007 remark suggesting the iPhone would always be a marginal player.  Ballmer's strategic missteps have been well documented.

Misstep #2: The "one OS fits all" strategy that now-departed President of Windows Steven Sinofsky championed no doubt delayed the eventual launch of Windows Phone - and needlessly tied the platform's success to the fortunes of the Windows PC, a shrinking market, and the new Windows tablets, an unproven commodity.

Misstep #3: It's likewise easy to blame a hapless Nokia, Microsoft's flagship Windows Phone partner. The Finnish company is still trying to find its way after abandoning its own Symbian and MeeGo platforms and largely ignoring the U.S. market for years.

Each of these mistakes is at least potentially fixable. Execution and speed to market can be improved. Strategy can be revised. App developers can be brought on board. Nokia could right itself. Ballmer has reportedly announced his retirement. 

The Real Problem

None of these missteps, however, reveal the actual reason for Windows Phone's continued failure in the marketplace. Worse, the failure of Windows Phone is a problem that may ultimately prove un-fixable. Here goes:

The real reason why Windows Phone has failed because there is no good reason for it to exist.

Go on, try to think of one. Think of just one reason - one customer-facing reason - why Windows Phone should exist? Is it better? Cheaper? Faster? Simpler? More secure? More connected? 

Ontological Uncertainty

Microsoft has designed a smartphone operating system that might be better, maybe even much better, for those things that Microsoft is good at - such as Word, Outlook, Xbox Play. The problem is, those do not seem to be the things that smartphone users want or need. 

In 2012, UK telecom carrier O2 commissioned a study of smartphone users. It showed that a typical user spends more than two hours a day (128 minutes) with their smartphone. The majority of this time, however, is spent on activities where Microsoft's Windows Phone offers no significant advantages over iPhone or the best Android devices. 

For example, smartphone users spend most of their time browsing the Internet, checking their Facebook status, tweeting, listening to music and sundry other acts. For which of these - or any of these - does Windows Phone offer a superior experience?

The innovative "People Hub" in Windows Phone, for example, may prove the better choice for those who wish to merge all their social networks and contacts under one area. Who cares? In the U.S., the typical smartphone user checks their Facebook page 14 times a day. A dedicated Facebook app, and not a Microsoft social hub, seems likely to be the optimum solution.

And while Microsoft may claim that Windows Phone offers superior email capabilities (a highly debatable position), the relevant fact is that email isn't even a Top 5 feature for the typical smartphone user.

What evidence is there that Microsoft will ever offer a smartphone that provides a superior experience over Android and iPhone for watching television, reading, making calls, listening to music, etc. 

Gaming could be the exception. Integration of select Xbox features with Windows Phone could help the platform differentiate itself, but even that is not guaranteed. Already, iPhone and Android offer millions of games, including some of the most popular games ever created. The Windows Phone/Xbox combination still has to prove it can create something more compelling than Angry Birds. 

Closing the Window of Opportunity

Is there still a chance for Windows Phone to become relevant? Maybe.

Mobile carriers, eager to limit the power of Android and iPhone, may find a welcome ally in Windows Phone. The opportunities for a successful third smartphone ecosystem do exist - in theory. But Microsoft is not even assured of that third position.

Consider these recent positive words in a blog post from Microsoft's chief spokesperson, Frank X. Shaw:

Windows Phone has reached 10 percent market share in a number of countries, and according to IDC’s latest report, has shipped more than Blackberry in 26 markets and more than iPhone in seven.

Yet, even this most positive of spins reveals the significant barriers to sustained Windows Phone success. Current smartphone marketshare numbers put Android at 48% and iPhone at 19%. However, these are misleading. The third largest smartphone platform is the deprecated Nokia Symbian, with 15% of the market, and BlackBerry legacy platforms with 8% of the market. Android and iPhone dominate new sales. 

Worse, the market could be slipping out of Microsoft's reach forever. Each new sale of an Android or iOS device leads to customers purchasing apps, games, music, movies and more, all optimized for that particular ecosystem. The great bulk of such purchases cannot easily be transferred to a new platform - which serves to lock-in customers to their existing platform choice.

Time may be running out on Microsoft to be relevant in the next phase of the global personal computing industry. 

(See also My Week With Android, Or Why I'm Buying An iPhone 5.)

To succeed in this environment, Microsoft not only has to show why its device is superior, which it has so far failed to do, but demonstrate how its product is so utterly superior that customers should leave behind all their iPhone or Android content, apps and familiarity. This is a tall order, indeed. 

Nor is it wise to expect a new hardware partner to rescue the platform. As ReadWrite reported earlier this year, HP will adopt Android for mobile devices. Could Samsung be the savior? Not likely. While the world's largest smartphone maker already offers some Windows Phone-based devices, its long-term strategy, as Bloomberg Business Week suggests, isn't even about Android, but control of its own platform - just like Apple enjoys.  

Windows Phone may be a great-looking, intuitive and well-integrated platform - but it remains unable to convince large numbers of buyers why they should choose it over the market leaders. It's very hard to see how either of those facts will change any time soon.

Image of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates courtesy of Microsoft. Image of Lumia 920 courtesy of Nokia.

(See also Facebook's Zuckerberg: We're Not Going To Build A Phone.) 

On Thursday, just two months later, Facebook is widely expected to announce an Android device in partnership with HTC at an event at its Menlo Park headquarters. The phone - yes, the Facebook phone - is expected to run a modified but not fully skinned version of Android, retooled to revolve around the little blue "f" that has come so far. At least that what the leaks seem to reveal.  If we're getting into semantics, you could say Facebook isn't building the Facebook phone - HTC is. 

So, How Did We Get Here?

Want to review the many times Zuck has denied rumors of an official Facebook phone? Here's a refresher:

November 3, 2010:

• "First of all, we're not a hardware company. Second of all, our goal is not to sell anything physical; our goal is to make it so that everything can be social."
• "It would be pretty silly for us to go after a strategy that focused on selling a small number of phones. We don't sell hardware. That's just not what we do." 

September 11th, 2012:

• “That’s always been the wrong strategy for us,” he explained. “It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us.”

January 30, 2013:

• "People keep on asking if we're going to build a phone," said Zuckerberg. "We're not going to build a phone."

In retrospect, it seems the denials around "building" a phone seems to have left the door open for hardware partners. It's not like we thought Hacker Way was going to turn into Foxconn or anything, but assuming Thursday's event turns out as expected, that Zuck sure is one literal fellow.

But What About The Other Four Facebook Phones?

The real funny thing? If Facebook launches a phone, it won't be the first Facebook phone at all - it'll be the fifth. 

Facebook Phones 1 and 2: Back in Februrary 2011 at Mobile World Congress, HTC unveiled a pair of phones with a curious twist: a physical button dedicated to launching the Android Facebook app. The HTC Status (a.k.a. the ChaCha) and the HTC Salsa were mid-range devices with largely unimpressive specs.

Facebook Phones 3 and 4: That April, a company called INQ announced the INQ Cloud Touch and the INQ Cloud Q - two semi-smartphones that would run a version of Android 2.2 interwoven with Facebook's Social Graph API. The Cloud Touch made it to shelves in the UK; INQ abandoned plans to manufacture the Cloud Q early in 2012.

Of all of the "Facebook phones" to date, the HTC Status enjoyed the most success, but that's not saying much. I reviewed it at the time - It was well built, with a funny little curve to the casing, social widgets everywhere and a tiny blue Facebook button on the bottom right. There was something likable about the Status - it was a playful little device, thoughtfully designed - but who was it for?

The Status went on sale - and then went on sale again - and ultimately just sort of faded away. Now you can get one for a penny on Amazon.

A New Mobile Era For Facebook?

But times have changed and the stakes have gotten a lot higher. After some major mobile fumbles (its slowness to the iPad, building in HTML5, etc.), Facebook now calls itself a mobile company, and really wants to mean it. 

In September of 2011, Facebook's Android app had 66 million monthly active users. By November 2012, that number had tripled. Facebook consumers one quarter of the total time people spend on mobile apps. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 23% of Facebook's total ad revenue was pumped into its coffers via mobile - up from 0%.

Facebook obviously gets the importance of mobile now. But it's still not clear why a new Facebook phone is a good idea. The company is as cozy as can be on Android and iOS already, and Facebook would be lucky to sell even "a small number" of these new phones, just as Zuck warned back in 2010. Even if the new Facebook software presented unique monetization opportunities, the revenue would barely be a drop in Facebook's ever-growing bucket.

So why bother? I guess we'll find out on Thursday. 

All photos by Taylor Hatmaker.

The manager was Martin Cooper. The device was a DynaTAC 8000x. The call was the first cellphone call in history.

The cellphone is 40 years old today. In place of Cooper’s 2.5-pound DynaTAC that could be used to bludgeon a passerby in a pinch, we now have four-ounce touchscreen computers connected to a world of information that happen to be able to make phone calls.

Cooper, now 84, has kept busy. He founded Arraycomm in 1992 to develop antenna software for mobile phones. He also founded Dyna LLC as a way to incubate innovation around cellular technology. From Dyna launched GreatCall, the company that made the Jitterbug cellphone. Cooper continues to do speaking engagements and is a member of several government groups that advise policy on wireless spectrum. 

I had a chance to meet Cooper in September 2012 when Motorola launched its latest versions of its Razr HD Android smartphones. He was excited about the concept of Smart Actions in the new Motorola phones. Smart Actions are features where the phone knows where you are and what you might be doing and acts accordingly. For instance, it can help extend battery life automatically or know when you are driving and cannot receive text messages. Much of capabilities of Smart Actions will likely end up in Google Now, the predictive technology Google has baked into its newest version of Android.

So today, on the 40th birthday of one of the most important technologies in human history, we salute you, Marty Cooper. On behalf of the human race, we say thank you.

Top image: From the oldest cellphone, to the newest, the Galaxy S4

Martin Cooper image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons