It’s true of platforms like Google Android, but it’s also true of applications.

Even on the iPhone, which reportedly drives $2.4 billion worth of applications in annual sales, very few application developers appear to be making much money. Zynga, creator of Farmville, is an exception, as BusinessWeek notes, doing more than $100 million in annual sales.

This isn’t to suggest that developers should stop trying. Quite the opposite. Now is the time to try a range of applications to see what sells.

Google is following the same strategy with its Android platform. The company is happily promiscuous with its code, allowing and even encouraging fragmentation to see where the industry will take Android. Fragmentation enables handset manufacturers and others to find the best fit for Android in the market, rather than going the Apple route. (“If we build it, they will come.”)

It’s very possible, as Bill Weinberg notes, that such fragmentation and experimentation will result in Android getting greater play beyond mobile than it does in the smartphone market.

I suspect Google won’t mind. As in other areas, it’s using the broad-based, open-source approach to increase adoption of its services like Search, services which generate more than $22 billion each year.

It’s an approach that works particularly well for a fast-follower: someone tracking the progress of an early market leader. An open-source strategy basically enables the industry to determine, by itself and for itself, what the market leader is missing and how to resolve the voids.

However, it’s also a good way to generate developer interest and, hence, modifications and add-ons. Application developers might be well-served by open-sourcing their applications to encourage adoption and make their road maps a community affair.

There are over 4 billion mobile phones on the planet, with virtually no one outside of the wireless carriers and handset manufacturers making money from this extensive device reach. The market is ripe for software businesses, but first we need to experiment to discover what sells. Open source just might be able to help with that.

The explanation was posted on T-Mobile’s support forums at 3:30 PM PT on Wednesday. T-Mobile also reconfirmed in a separate message, posted earlier at 9:30 AM PT, that it had restored service to all customers, including voice, text, and picture messaging.

Some users, however, said they were still without service, and took to T-Mobile’s support forums to prove it. “Really guys? Seriously? 4pm PST I wasn’t receiving messages. 4:44PST I wasn’t receiving messages,” “stevenjcarney” wrote. “My friends boyfriend is also not receiving messages. This is not fixed. FIX IT.”

“On Tuesday, some T-Mobile customers may have experienced service disruptions impacting voice and messaging services,” the company said at 3:30 PM PT. “We restored full service to all affected customers later in the day. After investigating the cause, we have determined that a backend system software error had generated abnormal congestion on the network. T-Mobile has since implemented additional measures to help prevent this from happening in the future. We again apologize to those customers who were affected and may have been inconvenienced.”

T-Mobile also recommended that users power off their phones if they still experienced difficulties. “This will update your connection to the network and should restore your access to these services,” the company said.

T-Mobile users were stung by outages on Tuesday, even as the company said it was fixing the problem. By late Tuesday night, the company had restored service to all users, and the hunt for the underlying cause was on. T-Mobile never said how many users in total were affected, merely identifying that the outages had been confined to 5 percent of users by about 10:25 PM PT on Tuesday night.

After T-Mobile declared the situation resolved, however, several users disputed the claim, and that powering off the phones would resolve any lingering issues. “This is simply not true,” “stephcon” wrote. “NOTHING has been fixed with my phone. Now, when people try to call my phone it goes straight to voice mail. I still cannot receive text messages, but people do receive the ones that I send them.

“After waking up this morning and realizing that my phone was still not working, I called T-mobile’s customer service,” stephcon added. “I was told to, of course, turn my phone off and then back on. The agent explained that he was re-registering my position on their network. He had problems doing that. He had me confirm the SIM card number and repeatedly turn my phone on and off. After realizing that he couldn’t resolve the problem, he put me on hold and got ‘tier 2 tech’ involved. They never got on the line with me, but the gentleman I had been speaking to came back on the line and told me that they told him that service “hadn’t actually been fully restored… still putting in fixes… rapid response team is working on it… no time line for when it may be fixed… shouldn’t be too long.” (That was at 11:30 am central time, today, Wed. Nov. 4th.) What he could do for me is give me a $10 credit on my account, and free unlimited mobile web on all 4 lines.”

#T-Mobile, however, had disappeared from Twitter at press time, replaced with cheering fans of both World Series teams. Meanwhile, Joe Mallahan, vice president of operations strategy for T-Mobile, trailed Mike McGinn by under 500 votes in the race to be Seattle’s next mayor.

Nokia introduced N-Gage in 2003 as a standalone handheld gaming device, which developed a small but enthusiastic following. Nokia later discontinued the device and instead came up with a plan to develop phones that would support the N-Gage platform. After a delay, it began introducing phones that could play N-Gage games in early 2008.

On Friday, Nokia posted a note at its N-Gage Web site informing users that the company would no longer publish new games for the platform, and that the N-Gage.com Web site and community aspects of the platform will be shut down at the end of 2010. Nokia will keep selling the existing games through September 2010.

Instead of N-Gage, Nokia wants customers who are interested in gaming to turn to its Ovi application store.

“As mobile gaming evolves and begins to encompass social gaming, we want to offer one store front with an even broader portfolio of games — games for everyone. It’s much more convenient to have one place to get all your mobile games, and this is what Ovi Store provides,” it said.

Nokia hopes to add more community elements to the Ovi Store that might replace N-Gage Arena, a site where gamers could chat in a forum and post their high scores. “We are actively working on offering more community elements through Ovi,” Nokia said.

Some N-Gage fans wrote of their dismay after hearing that the forum will be shut down. “A sad day indeed,” a user going by the name nce007 wrote on the forum. That user and others seemed unimpressed with Ovi. “Ovi cannot replace N-Gage in my opinion,” nce007 wrote.

“I just cannot believe that such a wonderful platform which had great potential is being phased away in such a manner to Ovi?” wrote another user who goes by apurvguptal.

Nokia has also been toying with the strategy behind Ovi since it launched last year. Ovi.com is a central site where people can find various services hosted by Nokia, including photo-sharing, e-mail, calendar and navigation services. Ovi.com now includes Nokia’s new application store. But earlier this year, Nokia shut down a Seattle office that was developing an online sharing service, halted investment in the Ovi Share photo-sharing service and shut down Mosh, a social-networking site.

Satio
The much awaited Satio boasts of many “firsts” for Sony Ericsson. Apart from being the first Sony Ericsson phone to sport a 12 megapixel camera, it is also the first and only phone from the company to use Series 60 version 5 based on Symbian OS. The Satio boasts of a large 3.5 inch display, the aforementioned 12 megapixel camera complete with Smile Shutter, Xenon flash and Touch Focus.

The device is a direct competition to the likes of the Nokia N97 and the Omnia HD all of which share the same OS platform The phone comes with 128MB of onboard memory and supports microSD cards of upto 32GB. The Satio has been priced at Rs. 35,950 – which is on par with the prices of the other two devices mentioned here.

The 1.0.1 update fixed an issue where audio continued to play after leaving Live TV mode, fixed crashes related to changing channels and zooming, added DVB and ATSC programming guides, accepts iPod Best variants when streaming to the iPhone, and more.

The EyeTV app temporarily disappeared from the App Store over the weekend because it included code that let users stream live TV shows over 3G.

“Some test code that enabled live TV streaming over the cellular network was accidentally left in the the EyeTV App,” David Fanning, Elgato’s press contact, told The Mac Observer. “Apple requested that we remove the code since their agreement with AT&T does not allow redirecting TV signals over the cellular network.”

Elgato submitted a version 1.0.1 update to Apple without the test code on Saturday, and by Sunday EyeTV was available at the App Store again. The version number for the app, however, was still listed at 1.0. The application was available at the App Store for about a month before it was pulled.

The 1.0.1 update fixed an issue where audio continued to play after leaving Live TV mode, fixed crashes related to changing channels and zooming, added DVB and ATSC programming guides, accepts iPod Best variants when streaming to the iPhone, and more.

The EyeTV app temporarily disappeared from the App Store over the weekend because it included code that let users stream live TV shows over 3G.

“Some test code that enabled live TV streaming over the cellular network was accidentally left in the the EyeTV App,” David Fanning, Elgato’s press contact, told The Mac Observer. “Apple requested that we remove the code since their agreement with AT&T does not allow redirecting TV signals over the cellular network.”

Elgato submitted a version 1.0.1 update to Apple without the test code on Saturday, and by Sunday EyeTV was available at the App Store again. The version number for the app, however, was still listed at 1.0. The application was available at the App Store for about a month before it was pulled.

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco • Get more from this author
by Chloe Albanesius

When your co-worker’s ringtone constantly fills the air with the latest auto-tune hit, it is most definitely annoying, but is it also a violation of copyright?

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) claims that when someone’s cell phone rings and one of its members’ songs plays as a ringtone, the wireless provider should pay performance fees for the right to use that song.

Wireless providers do not agree. In January, Verizon Wireless asked a New York district court to step in via a motion for summary judgment, which is basically a request by the defendant –Verizon – that the court rule in its favor without taking the case to trial.

On Wednesday, a New York district court sided with Verizon and ruled that it does not have to pay a performance fee in addition to the 24 cents per ringtone mechanical fee it already pays.

ASCAP argued that Verizon was liable when a ringtone was being downloaded and when it played during an incoming call.

On the first point, the court found that Verizon is not liable because a song cannot be played during the download process and therefore does not constitute a performance.

“ASCAP’s argument amounts to a claim that Verizon could change or enable its technology to allow a user to listen to a ringtone while downloading it,” the court found. “This argument is not addressed to the technology at issue in this case and does not present a factual context that is ripe for review.”

But what about ringtones played during an incoming call? The court pointed to the Copyright Act, which makes exceptions for songs played within the normal circle of friends, family, and social acquaintances. If you buy a CD and play a song for a friend, you don’t have to pay a licensing fee; the same rule essentially applies for ringtones.

In addition, you’re purchasing and installing that ringtone for your own entertainment – you don’t expect to make a profit from the “performance” of the song.

“Customers do not play ringtones with any expectation of profit,” the court said. “The playing of a ringtone by any Verizon customers in public is thus exempt [by the Copyright Act] and does not require them to obtain a public performance license.”

Furthermore, when a ringtone plays, Verizon does not “recite, render, play, dance, or act [the ringtone] either directly or by means of any device,” and thus does not “perform” the music, the court said.

The only thing Verizon does is send a signal to a mobile phone when it is receiving an incoming call – and that signal is the same whether the user has a ringtone or not.

A similar case between AT&T and ASCAP is also pending.

“The ruling is an important victory for consumers, making it clear that playing music in public, when done without any commercial purpose, does not infringe copyright,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote in a blog post. “This ruling should also protect consumers who roll down their car windows with the radio on, who take a radio to the beach, or who sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to their children in a public park.”

Ringtones are not ASCAP’s only target. The group has teamed up with other music groups like the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) to push Congress for legislation that would require licensing fees for music played in film downloads.

Songwriters and composers currently collect a performance fee when their music is played in a movie, on TV, in a video, or video game. If someone downloads those same shows or videos digitally, like an episode of “30 Rock” on iTunes, a public performance fee is not collected, according to a note on the NMPA’s Web site.

A US District Court judge has ruled that Verizon Wireless does not require a public-performance license for selling ringtones. According to Judge Denise Cote, when a ringtone plays on a cellular telephone – even when that occurs in public – the user and carrier are exempt from copyright

Unsurprisingly, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCA) expressed its disappointment with Cote’s decision.

“While ASCAP is disappointed with the ringtones summary judgment issued yesterday by the US District Court, this federal rate court proceeding with mobile providers is about much more than just ringtones,” ASCAP said in a statement obtained by Bloomberg.

The organization also pledged to pursue “fair payment for individual music creators whose creative works are used to build the businesses of others.”

As expected, the Electronic Frontier Foundation applauded the ruling and described it as an important “victory” for consumers.

“The ruling [makes] it clear that playing music in public, when done without any commercial purpose, does not infringe copyright. This ruling should also protect consumers who roll down their car windows with the radio on, who take a radio to the beach, or who sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to their children in a public park. Remember, ASCAP once demanded royalties from Girl Scouts for singing around the camp fire.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology expressed similar sentiments.

“The court has rejected an undue expansion of the public performance right and licensing costs, preserving the ability of consumers to make private uses of the music they legally purchase. Additionally, while selling ringtones may not be all that innovative today, in following the Second Circuit decision in the Cablevision case, the court has reinforced the notion that companies should not be directly liable for customers’ actions simply for providing innovative services.”

Consumers have been slow to embrace the mobile platform, which has been available only through T-Mobile USA. With Sprint, Google has a larger subscriber base to potentially tap.

The decision by Sprint will “help Android become a more mainstream operating system,” said Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst at Nielson & Co.

Sprint, meanwhile, needs as many weapons as it can get to fend off other carriers that want to poach its subscribers. The company, based in Overland Park, Kan., continues to lose its most valuable subscribers. But over the past few months, Sprint has released a string of high-profile devices including the Palm Inc., in the hopes of finding a match for the Apple Inc. iPhone.

Enter the HTC Corp. Hero. The Android-based smart phone uses HTC’s own customized user interface, called Sense, and is regarded by the company as its flagship product. The device has been available overseas, but Sprint will be the first carrier to offer it in the U.S.

The device will sell for $179.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and two-year service contract. It is to be available in stores on Oct. 11.

Sprint, meanwhile, needs as many weapons as it can get to fend off other carriers that want to poach its subscribers. The company, based in Overland Park, Kan., continues to lose its most valuable subscribers. But over the past few months, Sprint has released a string of high-profile devices including the Palm Inc., in the hopes of finding a match for the Apple Inc. iPhone.

Enter the HTC Corp. Hero. The Android-based smart phone uses HTC’s own customized user interface, called Sense, and is regarded by the company as its flagship product. The device has been available overseas, but Sprint will be the first carrier to offer it in the U.S.

The device will sell for $179.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and two-year service contract. It is to be available in stores on Oct. 11.