Today’s mobile tech quiz question: How much does it cost to license a closed mobile OS? According to sources at Microsoft, it costs OEMs $15/device to use their new Windows Mobile 7 OS. This person does his/her best to explain that $15/device is much cheaper than Android open source model, but it sounds a little desperate. The bigger question is why publish this info. There are only a limited number of phone manufactures in the world. Why not talk directly to them about it? What is the point of sharing this info with the tech world? Strange marketing indeed! 

Read about a brilliant way to combine location-based apps and customer rewards and brand marketing. Yesterday, Loopt and Virgin America rewarded users who checked in at the SF or Cancun International Airports between the hours of 11AM to 3PM PST with 2 for 1 tickets to Cancun. The only problem was that I did not hear about it until it was far to late. Bummer!

In a few hours, the SoC Summit in Taipei, Taiwan will turn to the topic of combining Android will SoC (Systems on a Chip). The conference will be providing up-to-date info on this important area of device design. It will also give manufacturers a better understanding of where the mobile phone market is currently and will be heading in the next year. The one this that I expect this summit to highlight is how rapidly the mobile industry is changing and the growth opportunities that are available to all players in the industry.

Hope to see you at the SoC Summit!

I recently returned from a trip to NYC. The trip went well and included a bit of networking with the local Silicon Alley community. The nice part about plane travel is that during some legs of the trip, you are forced to disconnect from the Internet and get info the old fashion way, by reading paper docs.

While reading through a few mags, I read a great article that directly answered some issues that have been plaguing some local startup founders that I know. If founders get only one thing out of the article by Jeffrey Bussgang titled “The Insider’s Guide to Venture Capital Financing“, they should get this: know your numbers cold.

You are talking to numbers guys and asking for their money. They may not be able to tell if you are an expert on tech since that is not their strength, but they will be able to tell if you are an expert on your numbers. If you are not, why would they want to invest with someone who does not understand the importance of numbers in business?

If you can’t understand or learn your numbers cold, you MUST bring in a partner that does and can present this critical part of your pitch to the investors.

Several carriers and in-flight WiFi companies are promoting their “Internet in a plane” service. Even Google is getting onboard (pun intended) by sponsoring free WiFi over the holiday travel season within airports and has inked a deal with Virgin American to provide free WiFi on their flights. Of course, Google has deep pockets and makes money when people use the Internet. The deal has the added benefit that they get to advertise with new Chrome browser. But besides Google, can anyone really afford in-flight WiFi?

As reported by Portolio.com, it costs between $100K to $250K to equip just one plane with the equipment needed for in-flight WiFi. To equip an entire airline of hundreds of planes requires more upfront cash than these in-flight WiFi startup companies have and can possibly raise. (Brother, can you spare a quarter billion?)

The biggest problem is that users have been conditioned to expect the Internet for free. (I often joke that “Internet” is Latin for free.) They don’t even want to pay $1 for this service. And even if they would pay $10 per session, a huge sum for most bargain travelers, it would require 10k to 25k customers on a single plane just to pay for the equipment costs for that plane. This does not even include the cost of maintaining the system over time.

It will require years just to get the upfront costs back. How can these in-flight WiFi companies really afford this? But more importantly, is this just too soon for this service? Should we wait for equipment costs to come down more as users become more connected? I am sure that there are other ways to invest this quarter billion that can get a higher and faster return for their investors and a better social return for the world.