The new entrants can offer lower prices and a better experience (although that can be debated), but they still suffer from two issues: lack of coverage area, and limited phone selection. If you stay primarily in one of the cities that they have coverage, then maybe the first issue isn’t really an issue for you. If you don’t need the latest and greatest phone, then maybe the second issue isn’t really an issue for you.

But for some people, the connection service is a secondary decision and the device comes first, and those are the people who the new entrants still can’t get. A Nexus S would bring a premium Android phone to them and would go a long way to satisfying those potential customers.

I showed up a little after the early birds as I wanted to get a sense of what it was like for someone trying to get a Wind phone on launch day. As expected, there were quite a few people milling about, consumers and media alike, and some were enjoying the $1 hot dogs.

And Globalive chairman Tony Lacavera was out talking to media and potential customers all day too.

I stood in line and chatted with people all morning about phones, plans, carriers, and other things. The general feeling I got from people was that the phone selection with Wind wasn’t great, the “Home” zones were a little smaller than they would have liked, but the plans were simple and cheap.

Now, there are a few types of cellular customers. If you are a techy-gizmo type of person who needs the latest and greatest hardware, Wind probably isn’t for you. If you are more concerned about using the phone to talk and text, Wind looks like a good option. If you live way out in the suburbs or travel there often, Wind isn’t too great for you right now. If you’re an urbanite, Wind becomes an attractive option to consider. The people in line seemed to be in agreement about these points, and they also seemed quite knowledgeable about phones and carrier bands and roaming charges.

One guy I spoke to lives in Surrey and was getting a Wind SIM card for his BlackBerry Bold just to test things out (that’s the great thing about no contracts… you can test the service out and cancel anytime if you’re not happy). He was disappointed with the lack of coverage in Surrey and the somewhat cryptic “coming later in 2010″ note attached thereto, but still picked up his SIM card anyways.

If you’re in Vancouver (less UBC), North Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, or New Westminster, you’re covered by a Wind “Home” zone and are good to go. If you live in Delta, Surrey, Coquitlam, UBC, or beyond, well, Wind isn’t quite ideal just yet. Although I did hear rumours that some Wind customers visiting from Toronto were seeing Surrey as a “Home” zone last week, the official line is that it is an “Away” zone and you will be paying roaming charges. As to the progress of the expansion of the coverage area, all I can say is that it will be moving outwards consistently throughout the rest of the year, with the goal of the full advertised coverage being achieved at the end of this year. The rate at which that happens is unknown right now, and a lot depends on how quickly the process of negotiating with landlords for land to put up a tower goes, followed by tower erection, connection to the rest of the Wind network, and network testing.

After talking for a while outside, I made my way inside and got a few shots of the store. At that point a media rep saw me with my notepad out and quickly came over to take some questions and pass me along to the appropriate individuals. Be sure to check out the interview post for some more information.

The phone will be available in North America “soon”.

The goal of this alliance is “to create a wholesale applications ecosystem that — from day one — will establish a simple route to market for developers to deliver the latest innovative applications and services to the widest possible base of customers around the world. In the immediate future the alliance will seek to unite members’ developer communities and create a single, harmonized point of entry to make it easy for developers to join.”

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/02/15/wireless-carriers-app-store.html?ref=rss#ixzz0fdEEx1P7

The current system of app stores (iPhone App Store, Google Marketplace, BlackBerry App World, Nokia Ovi World) seems to work well for consumers if you are only ever going to stick to one platform. However, what happens when you want to switch phones? Maybe you have an iPhone today, but tomorrow you want to go with an Android-based phone? Or what if your job gives you a BlackBerry? All of your purchased apps are now stuck on the old platform and there’s no way to bring them over, even if the same app is available on your new phone.

The current system is no friend to developers either. If a developer wants to reach the different platforms, they have to code up as many different versions of their app as there are platforms, often in different languages altogether. Different APIs, different rules, different features, and different platforms all need to be accounted for and supported.

Just about the only group that benefits from segregated markets are the established app stores. Forcing users to double-buy means that they get that extra cut  on the extra sale, however this is a double-edged sword. For an established app store like the iPhone’s, it provides user retention – someone who has spent $100 on apps isn’t likely to switch to another platform and lose access to their apps. For up-and-coming app stores it’s a rather sizeable barrier to entry. Why should a user with $100 invested in the app store switch to the new guy?

The app developers do get some benefit as well, receiving double revenues on double sales, however these aren’t expected to be very high, and if they are putting in quadruple the amount of work to develop and support multiple versions of their app, it’s of little benefit.

It seems as though the integration of gizmo5 into Google Voice is steadily progressing, taking one more step last week. The gizmo5.com domain was transferred to google on 18 January 2010, and now gizmo5.com redirects to google.com/gizmo5.

Gizmo5 was a VOIP company which provided both software and a service which allowed users to make VOIP calls. Similar to the popular skype-in/skype-out service offered by Skype, gizmo5 allowed users to register a phone number to attach to their gizmo5 software or device for the purposes of receiving calls, and allowed users to use the service to make cheap calls out to regular phone numbers.

Back in November of 2009, google acquired gizmo5, adding the missing piece to google’s telecommunications services.

It looks as though google’s intentions are to incorporate gizmo5′s VOIP capabilities with google voice’s services to provide a full VOIP service on its Android devices. This means one could have a fully functioning phone through google on only a data plan – no voice plan would be required. Furthermore, due to google voice’s cheap long distance rates, one could conceivably get unlimited talk and text in North America on just a data plan.

Cellular & Wireless

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Google’s first consumer phone has arrived.
You’ve read all the exhaustive coverage of Google’s Nexus One phone over the last month. The Android-based device emerged at a company holiday party and has been the talk of the smartphone industry ever since. And at an event here at its headquarters Tuesday, Google is unveiling the Nexus One and announcing a plan to sell it directly to consumers. (cnet.com)

The phone will be made available through Verizon, T-Mobile, and Vodafone, and can be had for $179 with a contract, or unlocked without a contract for $529. No announcement details for a launch in Canada yet, but it will work on the AWS band, which Wind Mobile currently operates on, and DAVE, Public Mobile, and the big three will also operate on as well.