Japanese firm DeNA brings its mobile gaming platform to Android in South Korea

Japan’s DeNA has teamed up with Korean Internet giant Daum to officially launch a localized version of its Mobage mobile social gaming platform for Android mobile devices in South Korea.
According to an announcement from DeNA, the ‘Daum Mobage’ platform and apps are now available for devices running the Google-owned operating system, with iOS apps currently in development. To access the platform and games, users must register at Daum’s Web portal, which already boasts 38 million members in Korea.

EU antitrust watchdog to probe Samsung over fair access to mobile patents

Samsung’s legal woes appear to be worsening after the European Union’s antitrust watchdog announced that it suspects the company of denying fair access to patents it holds on standardised technology for mobile phones.
The probe will look into whether Samung illegally prevented competitiors, which includes Apple, from using key patents it holds on mobile phone technologies, despite committing to doing so in 1998.
The EC press release states:

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules. The opening of proceedings means that the Commission will examine the case as a matter of priority. It does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation.

However, a spokesman wasn’t able to say whether the patents affect tablet devices, although Samsung had brought suits against the iPad in the past.
We reported in November that Samsung being investigated for possible misuse of fair, reasonable and and non-discriminatory (FRAND) patent licensing. FRAND licenses enable companies to share knowledge across the industry and work to developing open standards and technologies such as 3G or WiFi.
Central to the European Commission’s inquiry was whether FRAND patent holders — which Apple and Samsung both are — can use patents to shut down products. Today’s announcement is a direct response to its earlier investigation.
In September, Samsung reacted aggressively to Apple’s patent complaints by filing four cases in The Netherlands, accusing the Cupertino-based company of infringing patents with its iPhone and iPad products that utilise 3G technology.
Samsung brought summary proceedings in The Hague, where the electronics giant appealed for a Dutch trade and import ban on sales of all Apple smartphones and tablets. The ban was thought to apply to Apple and also five other companies that were affiliated with Apple’s sales and distribution.
We have reached out to Samsung for comment and will update the article when we receive a response.

Report: Mobile video on the increase as digital camera usage continues to wane

Video uploads via mobile devices are now much more common than they used to be, the photo and video sharing service Photobucket found out in a survey it conducted after Christmas.
Besides its Post Holiday Survey findings, the Denver-based company also integrated data garnered from its user base, which it summarized in an infographic.
Now independent again from News Corp, Photobucket claims to have 100 million users, who already uploaded 9.5 billion images so far. It also seems its recent partnership with Twitter gave it the boost it needed; according to Photobucket, its users currently upload over 4m images and videos per day.
Parts of this post holiday survey results are particularly interesting to understand the changing ways in which we interact with our cameras.
As we mentioned, video is increasingly popular; according to Photobucket’s data, 80% of the 2,227 respondents shot a video at least once during the holiday season. This is a net increase compared to summer 2011, a period on which the company had conducted a similar survey.
According to the company, its internal data further supports these findings, as video uploads to Photobucket.com have “more than doubled” in the past year.
As you can imagine, the surging popularity of mobile video is connected to the fact that our mobile devices are increasingly optimized for shooting quality pics.
This obviously had an impact on other photography devices. As Photobucket’s respondents also reported, the use of digital cameras has decreased this year, a trend that confirms the growing importance of camera-equipped mobile phones for amateur photographers (see our post ‘Did Apple redefine photography with the iPhone?‘).
It’s not just about the iPhone, Photobucket points out; according to internal data, 25% of its users’ mobile pictures were uploaded from Apple devices, while the remaining 75% came from Android devices (though it leaves us wondering what happened to Windows Phones and other platforms).
But beyond iPhones, Android phones and other smartphones, it is way too early to write digital cameras off. While only 64% used them as their main photography device this holiday season (vs. 82% in 2010), 38% of the respondents still switched between mobile devices and digital cameras in 2011.
This leads Photobucket to suggest that we still prefer to use cameras for pictures we care the most about. This could also have to do with the fact that we have all of our devices handy in the comfort of our homes during Christmas typical dinners, which isn’t always the case during summer holidays.
Overall, it’s worth keeping in mind that many users aren’t using mobile apps yet – 43% of the survey group have yet to try a mobile app for photos. However, those who do use these are increasingly active – 42% of the respondents used such an app more than once a day, up from 20% in Photobucket’s post summer survey.
The company seems particularly satisfied of its second free app, Snapbucket, which lets users edit and share pictures from their phone.

“We saw explosive growth in mobile in 2011; in fact, we topped 10 million mobile downloads to end the year,” Photobucket’s CEO Tom Munro says.

Sharing is also more and more common; 83% of the respondents stored their holiday images online, many of them with the intention of making these available through one or more social networks:
While it is way too early to know how 2012 figures will look like, chances are they will look quite different. It will be particularly interesting to take a closer look at social sharing; while MySpace’s popularity is declining, it remains to be seen if Google Photos could become Google+’s killer feature.
Liked this? You may also want to read: