VentureBeat’s annual mobile tech conference, MobileBeat 2010 took place this week in San Francisco, and featured speakers HP’s Phil McKinney, AT&T’s John Donovan, and Facebook’s Erick Tseng. The theme of “The Year of the Superphone” spotlit high-powered mobile devices and the operating systems, applications and functionalities that are making mobile the defining platform of new media today.

As for the Startup Competition, the two Tesla awards went to education app EduPath and map maker Micello. EduPath is the 21st century’s answer to bloated SAT prep books - the app has sections for the SAT and LSAT tests, with section tests that students can practice with anytime. Micello, described as the “Google Maps inside a building,” serves to route users through large buildings and geolocate a walking path, with compass function if the mobile device is so equipped.

Additionally, the 2010 Gettie Awards were announced at the conference, named by cross-platform mobile app store GetJar. For each mobile OS, an application was named for best success or innovation:

• Best Java application: WaveSecure Backup – Runs on non-smartphones and backs up or restores data securely
• Best Symbian application: Nimbuzz – Free app makes calls, instant messaging, file & location sharing with Nimbuzz friends and Skype, and major chat networks
• Best Windows Mobile application:Opera Mini – Fast Web browsing and file transfer, data compression for lower mobile plan charges
• Best Blackberry application: Kayak Flight/Hotel Search – Multi-site travel search engine Kayak.com created an app that also manages itineraries and flight information
• Best iPhone application: Tap Tap Revenge 3 – Social rhythm game with free songs and premium bundles of music collections
• Best Android application: Lookout –Runs virus and malware protection in the background, remotely stores backup data, locates a lost phone on a Google Map, remotely sets off a loud alarm on the device, or wipes data
• Best Overall Cross Platform App (Gettie Award): Layar – Augmented reality app for Android and iPhone that gives users contextual information about their location for finding restaurants, learning about buildings or playing games

At any tech conference you go to these days (’these days’ being the last two months) between 10 and 20 percent of attendees will be using an iPad as a primary computing device. Early adopters, sure, but the iPad has captured the public’s imagination more than any device in recent memory, much more than the iPhone upon its initial release.

ABI predicts that the category the iPad belongs to, Ultra-Mobile Devices (UMDs), will reach $12.5 billion by 2015, and that worldwide UMD adoption will increase 55 per year.

Also in the category are netbooks, smartbooks and mobile internet devices (MIDs).

At Steve Jobs’ keynote yesterday at WWDC, the Apple CEO announced that Apple was selling an iPad once every three seconds. Apple also announced that the iPad has already passed 2 million sales since its release two months ago. This is certain to accelerate now that the device is available internationally.

The iPad definitely looks like it will trend better than initial reports suggested, while netbooks will probably be the most volatile, as analysts have gone back and forth on what the long-term health of the market is. In May, ABI predicted that netbook sales would ‘boom’ in 2010, rising from 36.3 million sales in 2009 to 58 million in 2010.

At the same time, we’ve been receiving negative indicators about the netbook market. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty said that the iPad could more than double netbooks’ first-year performance of 7.6 million sales. Huberty also predicted that the Apple tablet will cannibalize the netbook market, pointing to a 13 percent year-over-year drop in netbook sales as an indicator of that market’s impending implosion.

Image via Wikipedia

“A day in the life with the Nissan LEAF” is a video which shows how electric vehicles (EV) will change consumers’ daily lives. With an iPhone, users will be able to control their cars from their sofa. First, an email prompts them when the charging is done. Then, another application allows them to turn on the air conditioner or heater before the drive. Bye bye first miles driven in glacial conditions in winter! During the long drive (a shopping day in a suburban mall for example), consumers can find in advance where charging spots are located, so they can charge their car when they get there. Nissan shows us an interesting vision of our future, which could be here sooner than you imagine.

Since this weekend, inhabitants of California have been able to test the first US shopping center with charging stations for electric vehicles. Thanks to a partnership between South Coast Plaza, a mall situated near San Jose, and Coulomb Technologies, a company specialized in charging-station infrastructure, Nissan’s vision is already a reality. “Shopping centers are some of the perfect places for the installation of networked charging stations because people spend several hours shopping and dining,” said Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb Technologies in a press release. Coulomb markets an open driver system network: the ChargePoint Network. Via smartphone, drivers can manage their EV, receiving their charging status by SMS or localizing unoccupied charging stations, for example.

Between fiction and reality, electric vehicles are becoming a new way to move. Besides technological questions, environmental answers and design questioning, EV will definitively change the relationship between drivers and cars. Into this passionate relationship will enter a third party: the smartphone. Like a remote control, mobile will become a link between driver and machine.

Image via CrunchBase

Barely two days after launching Buzz, the social networking feature for Gmail, Google bought the social search engine Aardvark for $50 million on February 11.

This acquisition is part of Google’s strategy of going social in order to compete with Facebook and Twitter.

Aardvark is a social search engine founded in July 2007 by former Google employees. The San Francisco startup, which launched its service in private beta in 2008, allows web users to ask questions which are then distributed through their social network and sent to someone who can answer them.

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So it’s official. The Apple tablet rumors have ended.

At this morning’s Apple event in San Francisco, Steve Jobs unveiled what Silicon Valley has been whispering about for years. Dubbed the ‘iPad,’ Apple’s tablet could be just the thing to launch smartphone-notebook hybrids into the mainstream.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary new product,” Jobs said at the event.

The iPad is fundamentally a netbook-sized iPhone. Outside of the design, the most impressive thing about the iPad is its 10-hour battery life, which is pretty representative of what we should expect from the category. Also impressive is the weight – 1.5 pounds.

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Google’s Android OS will be the second biggest operating system in the smartphone market by 2013, IDC predicts.

The research company forecasts that global smartphone sales will surpass 390 million units by that time, a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 20.9 percent between 2009 and 2013.

“In a market that was once dominated by a handful of pioneers, such as BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, newcomers touting open standards (Android) and intuitive design and navigation (Mac OS X and webOS) have garnered strong end-user and handset vendor interest,” according to the company press release.

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Application developers are switching from the social network platform to mobile platforms in 2010, as an extensive survey DM2Pro and Quattro projects. Of the responding developers, some work for advertisers and agencies while others publish or develop apps as a business. For marketers and advertisers, trends are shifting for mobile operating systems and budgeting.

The advertisers that responded to “State of the Industry: APPS,” or the brands that the agency represents, were mostly from the consumer packaged goods, retail and automotive categories.

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Update on 01.12.10 4:01pm: Video demo of Parrot’s ARDrone after the fold.

The big news at this year’s CES last week in Las Vegas were tablets and 3D TV.

Tablets have been one of the main topics of dialogue for the last few months, as Apple’s tablet has been gossiped about incessantly, really heating up around September and doing its best to outlive the Energizer Bunny.

At CES that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer . . . talked about tablets. As if there hadn’t been enough ‘just talk’ already. The consensus in the tech press is that Ballmer wasted an opportunity here, especially since the next big show is MacWorld 2010 in San Francisco next month.

3D TV is the technology that seems to only come out at CES. Last year this technology was the big story coming out the event — along with the Palm Pre, which has generally disappointed since. But this year we are ready for adoption — even if our wallets aren’t — especially after the mainstream success of Avatar and Up.

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Mobile augmented reality (AR) revenue will reach $732 million in 2014, according to Juniper Research (PDF), but there are some technological hurdles that need to be passed first.

One of the obstacles to augmented reality consumer adoption is that not all devices have the requisite camera, GPS, accelerometer, broadband connectivity and digital compass. For vendors, there is also the problem of monetization.

The fact that there are not a lot of AR-capable smartphones on the market right now means that adoption will be slow. Juniper predicts that the market’s 2010 revenue will be only $2 million.

The increased adoption of Android handsets and iPhones will accelerate AR adoption in the medium term. The first real bumps in AR revenue will not come until 2012-13, when Juniper predicts a dramatic spike.

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While m-commerce is growing, the biggest turn-off to potential customers is poor site design, according to Compete’s quarterly Smartphone Intelligence survey.

Thirty-seven percent of smartphone users have purchased something non-mobile in the last six months. The major obstacle to upping this number is that many sites are broken.

Eight percent of customers who tried to make a mobile purchase were unable to do so. That’s almost one-in-ten potential purchases failing at POS.

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