There are new developments every day in the mobile and cellular world. Mobile is the “hot” button in almost all electronic products, so mobile developments and business activity dominate the news. And, some recent happenings will have a serious impact on the industry.

Apple Buys Intrinsity

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Who the devil is Intrinsity? It’s a small chip-design company based in Austin, Texas, specializing in processors. It designed Samsung’s Hummingbird processor, which is based upon the ARM processor, but Intrinsity modified the design to for higher speeds and lower power consumption. Some people think that this design is the basis for Apple’s A4 processor in the iPad. In any case, it appears that Apple wants to maintain full control over what goes into its products, both hardware and software.
This is a curious purchase given that Apple bought P.A. Semi last year for its processor prowess. But several top people have left that division, so I guess Apple had to do something. Maybe Apple is just trying to keep up with Google, which recently bought Agnilux, another chip-design company peopled with Apple ex-employees who are no doubt working on a super-fast low-power device for Android.

Apple Adds Ads To Apps

You knew it was coming—ads on your cell phone. There have been a few attempts already, but Apple is moving one step further along the path to what could become a blizzard of wireless ads with its new iAd mobile device advertising service. These ads will be part of the apps sold on the iTunes Web site. App developers can choose to include ads, and the incentives may be good enough for some developers to do so. The big news is that Apple’s minimum ad buy is $1 million. Most mobile ads cost in the low hundred-thousand-dollar range. It will be interesting to see who buys these ads and how well they do.

HP Buys Palm

Palm made the very first smart phone as an extension of its highly successful Palm Pilot, and it was a big hit. Then along came the RIM BlackBerry, which knocked Palm out of the running. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and all the other dozens of smart-phone contenders, it’s no wonder Palm has been struggling.

The HP Pre? Palm’s Pre is a world-class smart phone, but it never seemed to catch on with the public. Maybe the fact it was only available through Sprint was part of the problem.

Last year, Palm made a valiant effort to get back into the game with its Pre and Pixi models. Despite the fact that these phones are very competitive, they have not sold well. I have played with the Pre phones, and their webOS is a far sight better than some of the other operating-system (OS) presentations out there (see the figure). Yet Palm lost its mojo and the visibility that makes iPhone and BlackBerry the smart-phone leaders.

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