»  Hey, he’s not using an iPhone either, and he’s on Apple’s board. Speaking of which, that’s a group he needs to talk to after Google’s OS Chrome disclosure, which will eventually go up against OS X. [Yahoo]

»  The Astonishing Tribe is doing some amazing facial recognition work. [Engadget Mobile]

»  DuPont is leading the charge for new mobile barcodes on packaging for goods. [GoMoNews]

»  Rumors still flying over what AT&T (NYSE: T) will charge for tethering the iPhone to a laptop. [Appmodo]

But the increased accelerometer usage won’t just be a boon for device manufacturers; mobile content and gaming companies also benefit from the motion-sensing tech, because it makes their games more realistic (and more fun). “Few consumers know what accelerometers are,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and principal analyst, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) for iSuppli, in the report. “[But] they do know that when they shake their handsets, they can roll a pair of virtual dice in a game of chance.”

iSuppli also found that accelerometers wouldn’t be limited to smartphones, noting that the motion-sensing capabilities are spreading to other kinds of handsets. As for market penetration, nearly all (18 out of 19) of the new handsets that Sony Ericsson introduced this year had accelerometers; Nokia was next, bundling the sensors into roughly 38 percent of the new phones it has released since January.

TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth told our sister site paidContent:UK last month that the company was in talks to raise additional funds, saying “It doesn’t take much math to work out (that the seed funding is) not going to last a desperately long amount of time.” The company has ambitious plans to expand beyond helping users manage their Twitter conversations to aggregating web-wide updates, including activity on social networks and e-mail. TweetDeck also launched a free iPhone app at the end of June.

That’s not to say that Davis foresees a mad dash for mobile purchases anytime soon, as the credit markets and other recessionary pressures continue to bear down on company’s ability to finance major M&A activity. On the other hand, those same issues are also likely to keep prices down, which should inspire some bargain-hunters. Earlier this month, the Jordan, Edmiston Group said that M&A in the mobile space was up 46 percent. Looking ahead, JEGI sees mobile social nets and mobile content providers as key areas of investment.

—A bigger role for telecoms: The rise of the mobile internet will also spur carriers to buy up services. Case in point: AT&T’s 2008 purchase of Wi-Fi operator Wayport is seen as a way for manage the flow of content and expand their relationships with other companies. For example the Wayport deal expanded the carrier’s Wi-Fi network to nearly 20,000 hotspots in the U.S. by adding locations at some Marriott Vacation Club and Four Seasons hotels as well as McDonald’s restaurants.“In the wired Internet, the carrier was a dumb pipe,” Jefferies & Co.‘s Robert Jackman told Reuters. “In mobile Internet, carriers will play a bigger role. If you can’t control end-to-end through to the billing relationship, you can’t control the end-customer.”

Initially, the new program will be aimed at Windows Mobile and BlackBerry developers, but will be expanded to other platforms, including Android, as the carrier rolls out phones using that platform. Obviously, Verizon has some pull with developers since it is the largest U.S. carrier with more than 86 million subscribers and is capable of providing a distribution system that would span multiple handset makers.

—The perks: As part of the new program, Verizon will offer developers access to its billing platform and location information. This means, developers will be able to charge subscribers using their Verizon bill, rather than using a credit card or other form of payment. In addition, the app will be able to see where the user is, allowing it to provide more relevant information. These are two things that handset makers can’t necessarily provide. Besides technical offerings, Verizon also promises to speed up the approval process by creating standard online form. (T-Mobile USA started a similar program last year. While there’s a few differences, the two have the same goal in mind: quicker time to market).

—The opportunity: Hughes said Verizon never spent a lot of time building storefronts for smartphones because historically most of the devices were purchased by a user’s company and they weren’t allowed to buy applications or ringtones. In the last year or so, that has changed, and many more of the smartphones are being purchased by consumers, who pay for their own bill.

—More details coming: Hughes would not be more specific on how that apps would be delivered to the consumer, and whether that meant they were going to launch a new app store, or how the revenue would be split with developers—those announcements will be made at the developer conference. But because RIM’s Co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie will be speaking at the event, it brings into question whether Verizon will have a role in RIM’s new App World, or if Verizon will be building a competing option. Likewise, Verizon will have to deal with the same thing when Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) rolls out its app store later this year. Hughes: “We don’t think the best experience is to have two mirror image stores on the phone…Verizon will have its own distribution that will court developers and work with Microsoft to pull the developer community into the Verizon experience.”

—Response to iPhone?: Is all of this a response to Apple’s iPhone? Hughes says not really. They’ve been offering content for years—it’s more about the emergence of the smartphone. Verizon is participating in what’s called the “Joint Innovation Lab,” which is a consortium between Verizon, China Mobile, Softbank and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) to create a single global platform for developers. Hughes: “The combo of what we’ll announce on 28th combined with the Joint Innovation Lab will put ourselves at the forefront of developer friendliness.”

Initially, Wi-Fi was looked at as a potential threat to the carrier, which wanted users to pay for data going over their own network. But now, as data plans have begun more prevalent, and users want to conduct heavy-bandwidth applications, Wi-Fi is considered more of a savior than a threat. It’s not clear if that’s what has taken Sprint and Verizon so long to cozy up to Wi-Fi. After all, CDMA handsets can be significantly more expensive compared to their GSM sisters, so it may just have come down to cost.

FierceWireless reports that Sprint Nextel has decided to require its smartphone suppliers to add WiFi into their devices for the carrier. Next year, it will release an updated version of the BlackBerry Tour that will include Wi-Fi, and of course the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre already has it. “Sprint is embracing Wi-Fi in all its major devices going forward,” said Jeff Clemow, the carrier’s director of business product marketing.

Separately, Boy Genius reports that Verizon Wireless has came to the same conclusion. In fact, after all BlackBerry’s after the Tour will sport Wi-Fi, including Storm 2 and the Aries. In addition, Verizon is including Wi-Fi in requirement specifications sent to handset makers with regards to future smartphones.

—Competition? What competition? The new operating system will increase the size of the netbook market, not necessarily cut into Microsoft’s (increasing) share of that business, the executives said. They also invited Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to put its own browser on Chrome OS, although they acknowledged it was unlikely that Microsoft would do that.

—What happens with Android One question is how much Chrome OS will overlap with the company’s existing Android operating system, which was already expected to be put on some netbooks. “There’s a great deal of commonality,” Schmidt said. “Eventually they may merge even closer.” Updated: On Friday, Google VP Andy Rubinclarified, however, that the Chrome OS isn’t going to replace Android on phones. “You need different technology for different solutions,” he said.

—Schmidt’s role on the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) board The FTC is investigating whether Google and Apple are violating antitrust laws because the companies compete and also share two directors, including Schmidt. Schmidt already recuses himself from discussions on the iPhone, which competes with Google’s Android phone operating system. He said Thursday he would talk with Apple about what to do about his position on the Apple board, considering their future competition in computer operating systems. “There is no change at the moment,” he said. Schmidt did not suggest that he was thinking of stepping down.

The move will apply to both channel in the dual-mode store - PC download and mobile download. Some 700,000 tracks had DRM switched off last week, the rest will be converted gradually.

Orange launched Music Store, which has all four majors and a bunch of indies, back in 2005, but it’s basic, lacking many discovery features found elsewhere. Orange may now be in line with many other stores on copy protection, and Orange has a strong commitment to marketing around music, but its store has a way to go on other counts. Orange’s earnings don’t break out its music numbers. Orange’s music head Richard Wheeler left for Virgin Media in April.

Meanwhile, MusicAlly makes the point that, while Orange Music Store will now be DRM-free on the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 5800 it carries, Nokia’s own Comes With Music, of course, is DRMed to the hilt.

Orange’s content SVP Herve Payan told me back in January 2008 he expected the store to go DRM-free within six months: “If we don’t remove the DRM, we believe it will be slow growth. Ideally, we will have MP3. The majors are changing.”

Five months later, at home in France, Orange launched an unlimited-downloads subscription service, Musique Max, apparently with no copy locks, before realising it had incorrectly translated its French press release to overstate the extent of DRM in the offering, which uses OMA files for mobile and WMA for PC.

The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). Others participating include: GSR Ventures and Keytone Ventures. Borqs has now raised a total of $25.4 million.

The company, which also has U.S. headquarters in Sunnyvale, helps carriers integrate their brand on to the Android platform, and helps build tailored app stores, by leveraging both apps in the Android Market as well other Java apps. So far, it has announced China Mobile as a customer, but it plans on announcing other relationships in the U.S. later this year. On its web site, it said that it was involved in creating the OPhone, a Lenovo device that looks very similar to the iPhone.

Borqs said its expertise let’s mobile operators launch Android-based 3G phones or services in less than six months, reducing the cycle time savings by more than a year.

The figures were shared tonight at a Seattle event called The Naked Truth 2009, which is discussing revenue models for consumer Internet startups. The four presenting startups are Redfin, UrbanSpoon, Picnik and Animoto. While I wasn’t able to make it, TechCrunch, which is in attendance tonight, has the slides here. More numbers from UrbanSpoon after the jump…

UrbanSpoon highlights:

—Traffic: 74 percent of UrbanSpoon’s traffic comes from Google (NSDQ: GOOG), while 99 percent of its mobile traffic occurs on the iPhone.

— Revenue per 100,000 visitors: Web is $2,000 and Mobile is $5,000.

—Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) Commercial: resulted in 300 percent growth.

The standard called the Advanced Television Systems Committee-Mobile/Handheld (ATSC-M/H) will be voted on by the full membership this summer, reports broadcastingcable.com. If it passes, the Open Mobile Video Coalition says 70 stations are are on track to launch mobile DTV services later this year, though real consumer devices probably won’t hit the streets until 2010.

Today, cellphones can watch clips on YouTube and other streaming video services. There’s even specific news stations, such as BBC World and Al Jazeera English, which both launched iPhone apps recent, through a London-based company, Livestation, reports Reuters. “This is mobile TV 2.0—completely reinvented and redesigned, and I think it’s going to overtake the old models very very rapidly,” said Livestation’s CEO Matteo Berlucchi.

At the center of the debate is not necessarily technology. Broadcasters, and even other services like Qualcomm’s FLO TV, have an advantage because they are using designated spectrum to deliver it over the air. The downside is that the phone or device has to have a special chipset embedded in it to work, but the quality is much better. Likewise, some streaming video services may not offer the highest quality, especially if the cellular networks get overcrowded.

Rather, the debate is over making money. Forecasts for the market have nose-dived over the past few years. Strategy Analytics now expects the mobile TV broadcasting market to total $280 million next year. Only three years ago the firm forecasted the market to reach $5.4 billion in 2010. “It is a financial disaster,” said John Strand, a consultant who has followed the mobile industry closely for more than 12 years. “It’s a nice product, but the customers won’t pay for it.”

While that may be true, not everyone is expecting to make money via user subscriptions. FLO TV, which is distributed through Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T), expects users to pay about $15 a month for the service. But as Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) rolls out more nationwide coverage, it expects to launch its own direct-to-consumer offering that may be more flexible in pricing. Likewise, broadcasters haven’t settled on a business model for their own mobile digital TV offering, but they think it would be more similar to the traditional TV market, where users would get a set number of free channels, and the service would be ad-supported.

It will remain to be seen if that’s enough, and if consumers would rather watch live TV via a broadcast, or streaming over the cellular network.

»  Time to make the donuts… and beyond—T-Mobile will be pushing out as many as four Android updates this year, starting with their D-Class, Donut. [MobileCrunch]

»  The iPhone 3G S is limited… literally. [iPhone Central]

»  Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is rolling out AmazonWireless, which sells you cell phones and plans sans rebate hassles and with two-day shipping. How Amazonian of them. [Wireless Week]

»  Maybe the moguls in Sun Valley complaining about Twitter’s prospects saw this report about celebs not touching their TwitterBerries in months. [Gawker]

News Corp. has a mixed track record on selling device subscriptions so far. The Wall Street Journal and Times of London offer Kindle subscriptions, but Murdoch has been quite open about his dislike of the way Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) maintains control of the customer relationships. At the same time, WSJ.com’s iPhone and BlackBerry apps debuted free—albeit with warnings that paying up would be required down the line. We reported last week that Dow Jones is surveying WSJ.com iPhone app uses about willingness to pay and how it might affect or fit in with other subscriptions. No price points were offered and we were told that the timing for a change had not been set.

Murdoch continues to brag about WSJ.com’s subscription base (something well in place before News Corp. acquired parent Dow Jones), adding this time “that no one else has had the nerve to do that yet.” (Actually, lots of companies have tried, some more successfully than others; the WSJ is the largest that has succeeded consistently.) But Murdoch hints that more is coming: “We have a lot of plans I’m not ready to disclose yet, to really lead the newspaper industry into monetizing what it has. It’s true what people say, the distribution of news, it gets cheaper every day because of new technology. And one day you won’t need printing presses or paper. But you’ve still got to have something to move, and that—i.e. content, the news itself. And that can’t come free.”

—UK reports: Murdoch brushed off Stuart Varney’s interview-leading question about a report in The Guardian that News International’s News of The World paid out more than $1 million to keep details of alleged phone hacking confidential. (The paper’s parent Guardian News & Media also owns our parent company ContentNext Media.) “I’m not talking about that issue at all today. I’m sorry,” he told Varney, who quickly backed off.

—Sun Valley economics: “I’m shocked at the business mood, which is talking about either that we’re at the bottom of the recession or we’re going lower, but that it’s going to take years and years, like five years at least, before we see any real growth coming out of this ... I would say the conference is definitely very bearish.”

But the launch of the 3GS, with its faster processor and higher speed chipset, has introduced a bit of fragmentation. With over a million of the new iPhone 3GS’ already sold, companies now have to decide whether to start developing separate versions of each game for the different platforms, or whether to just release upgrades—as well as how to best allocate resources in the future.

Their choices carry long-term financial implications, since it doesn’t make sense to spend money (especially for indie developers) to make games for a platform (3G) that may eventually have a much smaller user base.

But in the near-term, choosing one version over the other could cut into the variety of games that iPhone and iTouch owners will be able to choose from. IndustryGamers talked to a number of mobile gaming companies to find out their preliminary thoughts—and the consensus is that they’re going to try to support both the 3G and the 3GS for the time being:

—EA Mobile: The company plans to create new versions of existing games for the 3GS so that people can play “no matter which iPhone or iPod touch a consumer has,” according to Travis Boatman, EA Mobile’s VP of worldwide studios.

—Digital Chocolate: Founder Trip Hawkins sees the two devices as a boon: “The older models usually come down in price and more people can afford them. Also, often the same product, without changes, will just perform better on the new models because of faster data speeds or better memory management or a nicer sound system.”

—Sega: Will continue to support both, though Paxton LaZar, Sega of America’s director of digital content said that they’d create special versions of games that “take full advantage of the extra power afforded by the new 3GS.”

The announcement follows layoffs of 3,000 people in the mobile group earlier this year. Of those, about 500 came from the same Libertyville offices.

Motorola has pinned its recovery on Google’s Android operating system, but it has yet to unveil any of the handsets. Some pictures have surfaced on the internet, depicting what the phones may look like, but Motorola has kept plans very hush-hush. The company is expected to release multiple Android phones during the fourth quarter, and already there’s signs of the company working closely with application developers.

Starbucks, the City of San Francisco’s 3-11 program, JetBlue, and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), are among users. For now, it’s free although CEO Jesse Engle tells the WSJ that the company plans to eventually charge. Twitter too has talked about making money from its corporate users.

It’s the latest company in the Twitter ecosystem to raise funds. Last month, startup site ChubbyBrain calculated that, to date, investors have put $23 million into 11 startups with businesses that revolve around the site. Twitter itself has raised $55 million. Release.

Sprint was rumored to be considering such a move to save the company money. However, a deal of this kind was pretty controversial since outsourcing has not caught on here in the U.S. To be clear, the company is not transferring ownership or control of its network over to Ericsson, and will continue to control network strategy and investment decisions. It will also remain in compete control of the customer. Sprint said it expects to gain a competitive advantage by tapping into Ericsson’s 30,000 trained experts, while also realizing immediate cost-savings on labor, network management and operations. Sprint is calling the project with Ericsson, “Network Advantage.”

Sprint’s President Steve Elfman said in a release: “No other U.S.-based carrier has followed through on the business-enhancing vision inherent in Network Advantage. Our best-ever network performance will become even better by leveraging Ericsson’s world-class leadership in network services, their proprietary tools, and the knowledge of more than 30,000 dedicated and highly-specialized service professionals to power Sprint’s Now Network.”

The report names two reasons why this could happen: the rapid increase of applications available for the iPhone and the price drop of the 3G model to $99. Generator also predicts that Nokia will stumble and see its market share cut in half from 40 percent in 2008 to just 20 percent in 2013.

ZDnet points out that the report is conducted in a vacuum and doesn’t really take into account any serious growth from other smartphone competitors, like BlackBerry, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) or Android. To be sure, Nokia could be considered a bit behind the game right now, as it waits for its dominate operating system—Symbian—to release a new smartphone version of its platform that could more easily support touchscreen phones and the developer market. Apple is undeniably a force that others must compete against. However, with Generator also projecting the overall number of wireless subscribers worldwide to grow by around 2 billion to reach nearly 6 billion by the end of 2013, there will likely be a couple of winners.

Now a Chicago-area headhunter, who is currently working with Motorola to find Liska’s successor, is getting caught up in the drama. Gregory Crecos, the founder of executive search firm Gregory Michaels & Associates, appeared in court today “to object to a subpoena in the case,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Motorola’s attorneys asked him to produce documents involving his dealings with Liska dating back to the executive’s former positions at other companies, and to hand over documents related to job searches at Motorola in 2007.

Crecos told reporters after the hearing that he has enjoyed “a great relationship with this company,” but he said Motorola’s lawyers are now smearing his reputation. “I’ve been doing this while they’re knocking the crap out of me,” he told the Tribune.

Crecos said the problem is that Motorola believes he tipped off Liska in December 2008 that the company was secretly searching for a new CFO. Knowing that he was going to be replaced, Motorola is alleging in court filings that Liska had months to scheme against the company in retaliation. But Crecos said that’s not true. While he may have been working with Liska on several searches for other Motorola positions, he did not tip off Liska and never breached professional confidentiality. And, he was not retained by Motorola to find the CFO’s replacement until “months and months” later, he said.