Photograph by Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, with the Firefox logo during a news conference at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

While many European technology companies have pared back their presence at this week’s Mobile World Congress, Silicon Valley’s Mozilla is leaving a noticeably bigger footprint.

The maker of the popular Firefox web browser sent about a hundred employees — which is a sixth of its staff and a 50 percent increase from last year — and prepared a much larger stand to help it showcase its new open mobile operating system.

The hope? That by letting loose its fox in the smartphone world, it can steal some of the spotlight from Google’s Android, which dominates the market.

“We have made a more significant investment this year because we have more to say and show,” Peter Scanlon, senior director of global branding at Mozilla, said Sunday in an interview in Barcelona.

Mozilla’s new marketing message, “blaze your own path,” shows the fox from its logo unleashed and following people as they move around to explain how they can access the Internet regardless of where they are.

The question remains whether that campaign, which included a lavish presentation in front of hundreds at the luxurious Hotel Arts Barcelona, was convincing. Mozilla’s mobile software, first discussed a year ago, has been a long time coming. Phone buyers looking for a bargain may be tempted to see whether a new generation of feature phones — such as Nokia’s 105 — may do the trick and be available faster.

Mozilla does have some big names in its corner. As I wrote about yesterday, more than a dozen wireless carriers including billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil are supporting Mozilla’s open mobile operating system to make a range of cheaper smartphones. Firefox-based devices may arrive as early as the second quarter, Mozilla said.

We’ll see how fast and far this fox can run.

–With assistance from Cornelius Rahn.

Original post is Mozilla’s Fox Tries to Steal Spotlight and Outrun Google’s Android by Tech Blog.

Photograph by Michael Caronna/Corbis

Of the top 25 area codes where text-message spam originates from the U.S., 15 are in California, Florida and New York.

If you live in the 347, 201 or 510 area codes, or basically anywhere along the eastern edge of Florida, there’s a good chance you live near a mobile-phone spammer or a business that enables one.

According to new research from Cloudmark Inc., a San Francisco-based security company, the bulk of text-message spam in the U.S. comes from just a few regional clusters on the coasts. That’s a twist from traditional e-mail spamming, which often originates outside the U.S.

Of the top 25 area codes where text-message spam comes from the U.S., 15 are in California, Florida and New York. The clustering suggests the criminals live there, do business with companies that are based there, or both, said Rachel Kinoshita, head of Cloudmark’s security operations.

The fact that Cloudmark can even identify where the spam is coming from highlights a key difference between text-message spam and e-mail spam.

Criminals use the infected computers of innocent people to send e-mail spam, which makes it hard to track. But hacking into someone’s cell phone to send mobile spam is more difficult.

So instead, text-message spammers buy lots of prepaid subscriber identification modules, or SIM cards (a key component that cell phones need to make calls). The cards are then put into SIM “boxes” that can hold dozens of the cards. Those boxes, which are testing tools the mobile operators use, get the cards to behave as if they’re in real phones. Criminals then hook the boxes up to computers that tell the cards to pump out text messages until the accounts are drained.

However, before the cards are sold, they are assigned blocks of numbers based on their geography. This opens the door for tracking.

Mobile operators such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon Wireless use Cloudmark’s data to disconnect spammers’ numbers, Kinoshita said. Cloudmark says its anti-spam technology helps shield nearly 2 billion people worldwide from attack.

As Bloomberg reported last month, smartphone spamming has now reached 4.5 billion messages a year in the U.S. Kinoshita recommends forwarding any text message spam you get to the short code  “7726,” which spells “spam” on most phones, to alert your network operator to the abuse. That’s an industry-wide initiative that uses Cloudmark technology.

She cautions against responding to the messages, which often promise gift cards or Apple products.

“There’s no free iPad out there for you and there’s no $1,000 gift card,” she said.

Original post is Do You Live Near a Text-Message Spammer? Check Your Area Code by Tech Blog.

What were the interesting takeaways?

The display has been seen as the costliest part of the phone. Not so today, according to Nomura. NAND flash memory costs between $20 and $22 per device on average, as compared with $18 to $20 for the display. That’s good news for memory suppliers Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, SanDisk and Micron Technology. The NAND’s heftier price tag comes as phonemakers like Apple and Samsung increase the amount of memory in their devices.

While Qualcomm is the mobile chip market leader with a 24 percent share, followed by Texas Instruments Inc. with 12 percent, third place is shared by two vendors: STMicroelectronics NV and Taiwanese company MediaTek Inc. — the low-cost supplier that’s been gaining steam. At 9 percent, MediaTek’s share of the mobile semiconductor market last year was higher than that of Intel, Broadcom or Samsung.

Nomura’s graphical guide is big, so we broke it into different chunks below. You can also view the complete chart.

Original post is What’s Costliest Part of Smartphone? Hint: It’s Not the Display by Tech Blog.

If you lose a phone in San Francisco, you were probably at a coffee shop. Misplace it in London? Try the pub. In Brussels, call the dentist’s office. As for New York? A fast food restaurant.

Those are the findings of Lookout Inc., a San Francisco company that makes security software for mobile phones. The company arrived at its conclusions by examining geographic data for some 9 million smartphones it helped locate last year.

Lookout customers who lose their phones can log into a website and see where the phone is and activate a loud screaming noise to keep thieves at bay. Lookout took that information and combined it with data from Foursquare to help it determine the likely locations where the phones were lost.

The top locations in the U.S. are mostly unsurprising: coffee shops, bars, offices and restaurants. People tend to lose their smartphones at night, between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m, and during major events, such as New Year’s parties and sports tournaments.

But overseas, Lookout found the top places to lose a phone to be quite different. In Tokyo, more phones with Lookout software were lost near historic sites than anywhere else. In Seoul, martial arts dojos and baseball fields topped the list. And in Moscow? Automotive shops and military bases.

Lookout says $7 million worth of phones are lost each day by some portion of its 15 million users. That translates into billions of dollars a year in losses for consumers if the phones aren’t recovered. That’s good business for smartphone makers — but possibly bad news for thieves and Good Samaritans alike, who end up walking around with screeching lost phones in their pockets.

Original post is Lose Your Smartphone? Check McDonald’s. Or the Dojo. by Tech Blog.