Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine featured two SOMA enabled applications today in its weekly newsletter. iambic’s TopStory and Smaato Cost are presented and readers are provided info to download and invited to comment. Both smartphone apps for Windows Mobile are free to downlad, because they are ad-enabled by SOMA - the Smaato Open Mobile Advertising platform.

 Milwaukee, WI July 19, 2007 - Developer ONE today released their new RSS news reader product “News Mix” and announced their support for SOMA - the Smaato mobile ad serving platform.

Developer One is a leading Windows Mobile software developer with several award winning applications, including lead product AgendaOne. In 2005 Developer One has been named developer of the year by Handango.com.

NewsMix has been released today and can be downloaded for free at the Developer One website at: www.developerone.com. It comes with several pre-configured news channels and can be easily customized with personal news feeds. Versions of NewsMix are available fr Windows Mobile 4 (Pocket PC and Smartphone Edition) as well as Windows Mobile 6 devices.

 This just in: Palm Inc. announced today in its international software newsletter that Smaato Cost has been selected Product of the month for the Windows mobile version. The newsletter is targeted towards registered Palm users and software developers interested in news, trends and cool applications.

Smaato Cost is featured here in the solutions directory on the Palm website and is available for free download at www.smaato.com. Smaato is a registered partner of the “Designed for Palm Products” program.

 Red Herring (www.redherring.com) published a cover story about mobile advertising in its digital edition today. UK-based editor Peter Purton gives a great overview about the players and the current trends in mobile advertsing globally:

“Mobile advertising and marketing using the cell phone to sell is quietly turning into a global phenomenon. While web advertising has been getting all the attention, mobile advertising has grown up in the background, attracting the attention of tens of millions of people. […]

The prospect of getting this unprecedented level of access to cash-wielding consumers has lots of companies excited from global automotive brands like Toyota, BMW, Ford, and Peugeot, to consumer players like Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson, to media groups like Warner Brothers, not to mention companies from the telecommunications, computing, and Internet worlds.”

Peter goes on and features several leaders in mobile advertsing, including Advertising.com’s newly acquired Third Screen Media, Screentonic, other players like Vodafone as well as Smaato.
“… San Mateo, California-based mobile advertising platform maker Smaato helps produce advertising revenue for off-deck services by allowing developers of mobile services to integrate ads with their content. Harald Neidhardt, Smaato’s chief marketing officer, agrees that carriers have a substantial advantage. But they won’t always, he says.

The carrier deck may be prime real estate, he adds, but you can’t put everything on the carrier deck. Mr. Neidhardt compares the situation to the days when AOL and Prodigy had all the content. They wanted to keep people within their walls but what the web people wanted to use was a thousand times bigger. And that is where they ended up going.

The lesson of that era leaves no doubt in his mind about where things are headed: “the off-deck market will explode”, he says. …

 Smaato is proud to announce that it has joined the dot.mobi advisory group chaired by Michael O’ Farrell and is active in the mobile advertising task force led by Eric Eller.

The Mobile Advertising Task Force is currently collaborating on a white paper that will address some of the frequently asked questions of mobile advertising and together are working to form the MAG perspective on the subject. This paper will look at identifying the product, policy and commercialization opportunities that mobile advertising has for the market using the .mobi domain.

Smaato CMO Harald Neidhardt has been selected as one of the co-editors for the white paper supporting Eric Eller (Millennial Media, USA) in his publishing task.

“Smaato welcomes the .mobi domain initiative and is proud to be an active member of the .mobi advisory group. We have identified that truly mobile landing pages are still a missing link in providing a engaging mobile user experience for brands and marketers.
We promote .mobi domains as a trusted initiative to accelerate the growth of the mobile economy even further. Being at the leading edge of the mobile advertising market - especially for smartphones - we see .mobi progressing on a daily basis,” stated Harald Neidhardt, CMO Smaato Inc.

In addition to its .mobi support and its membership in the US and European MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and the German BVDW (German digital media association) Smaato is committed to help the mobile advertising community with its support of global advertising standards.

Update July 25, 2007: Harald has been elected Vice Chair of the dot.mobi MAG task force on mobile advertising.