In the mobile device landscape, laptop and smartphones are the bookends. “In the middle are many different devices trying to steal the marketplace, or eclipse the opportunities of the smartphone, including netbooks, portable media players, smartbooks,” said Michael Morgan, senior analyst, mobile devices. “In my 10 years of covering this, I’ve never seen so many devices. But when you look at smartphones, you have to have a holistic view of all these mobile devices. Smartphones aren’t immune to the success of some of these other devices.”

A quick history of the smartphone: “They’ve been around for a decade,” said Morgan. “The original smartphones were the convergence of the PDA and the mobile phone.” In comparison, today’s smartphones are well integrated and highly functional, with GPS/Bluetooth, Wifi and on 2G/3G and sometimes 4G networks. “They’re extremely complex,” said Burden. “We’re past the trend of scaling down in the form factor; we’re more comfortable with PDA-sized phones.”

Despite the fact that smartphones have been around for a decade, there is still confusion about what a smartphone is. “What do we mean by ‘smart’,” asked Morgan. “There are many basic phones that have touchscreens or QWERTY keyboards that are elements of smart. Smart phones are not defined by optional devices: they’re distinguished by their highly functional and customizable experiences.”

He continued describing the definition of a smartphone: “It has to be used as a primary phone, matching telephony with a high level operating system and the applications of that phone need to be available to the user regardless of access to the wireless network,” he said. “You should still be able to use the apps downloaded to the phone. That’s how we define smartphone. What gets hazy when you look at netbooks, a low-end laptop. Smartbooks was the original idea of the netbook–to be always connected to the wireless network via a mini-laptop form factor. What we ended up getting was the netbook form factor. If we look at the smartbook, it’s not that different from a smartphone.”

Although smartphones get all the love (and the press), they still only represent a small portion of the industry: approximately 16 percent of global mobile phone sales last year. In 2015, reported Morgan and Burden, that number will rise to more than 30 percent of the overall mobile handset volume. “This could seem like a conservative number given how the numbers have been accelerating, but there are a variety of issues at play,” said Burden. “Those issues range from how demographics of users break down in various regions to technology issues. In many emerging markets, the number could be 50 percent by 2015.”

Nokia is still the world leader in phones and smart phones, followed by RIM and Apple. Nokia’s impressive numbers in the mobile market must be seen in context of the global economy. “The new customers are coming from emerging markets who can’t afford a $500 device,” said Morgan. “For the lower priced phone, you need scale and this is Nokia’s strength.They will retain and potentially grow market share going forward.” The two also predicted that “the iPhone has a great opportunity to reach into the business segment.” “With their laptops and Apple stores, a small business might go there for a complete business solution,” said Burden.

The most prevalent operating systems among mobile phones is, similarly Nokia’s Symbian, despite all the press that Android has been getting. “Symbian is the largest OS and it has a good play and may be more important going forward than mindshare would dictate today,” said Burden. “In its current form, even in its open source form, it doesn’t meet the expectations of how a smartphone should look and act. But we have to be cognizant of the volume that Nokia represents. When we say one day every phone will be a smart phone, we have to look at individual vendors and how their portfolios permit that. Nokia could do that; they could push Symbian downstream and keep it as a player int this market. But this is pure speculation. It’s just important to note that Symbian is not an OS we can count out, even if it doesn’t match expectations. It can’t be ignored.”

Android also gets a huge amount of attention, but Burden and Morgan pointed out that it isn’t the only Linux-based OS out there. Others include webOS (Palm, which was just acquired by HP), MeeGo (Nokia/Intel), LIMO, and China Mobile. According to ABI Research, Android currently accounts for 41 percent of the Linux phone market, and is gaining ground rapidly.

What is the primary factor driving sales? “At this point, it’s becoming the platform, the marrying of hardware to an OS and the OS’s ability to develop mindshare through ecosystems or even marketing,” said Burden. “Two key winners of that is Apple’s iOS and Android. They’re high tech devices with an OS that allow developers to create many apps. To understand everything about a smartphone can be overwhelming [to consumers], and the key driver can be apps. People want a phone that works and does everything they want to do well. They don’t buy it for the 12-megapixel camera: they want email, to call their friends, and to download apps. ”

What will be the dominant handset in 2015? Morgan and Burden declined to specify a particular handset. “The mobile device market has always been a multiple device market,” they said. “No one form factor will suit the needs of everyone. There are certain form factors that will be considered cutting edge, but in no way will all devices move towards a standard shape.”

To push Pente Group to the next level, Bouropoulos hired mobile executive Michel Besner as president. Besner is also familiar to the Hollywood production and post community as the co-founder and president  of Kaydara, a real-time 3D animation software. The company’s MotionBuilder has been used in games such as EA Sports’ 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV, Epic Games’ Gears of War 2 and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, as well as blockbuster film franchises including The Matrix trilogy and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. MotionBuilder was also an instrumental piece in the development of the virtual cinematography and motion capture used in Avatar.

MobilizedTV sat down with Besner to talk about his transition to mobile and his plans with the Pente Group.

MobilizedTV: Michel, what have you been up to since Kaydara was acquired by Alias Systems in 2004?

Michel Besner: Besner continued serving as the company’s vp of Business Development. In 2006, when Alias was acquired by Autodesk, I took responsibility of the 3D entertainment and design visualization portfolio which incorporates celebrated software brands 3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, HumanIK and FBX.

I got into the mobile messaging market as senior vp of marketing at OZ Communications, which wasacquired by Nokia in 2008.I have been looking into the mobile entertainment and social media space for a while. Pente Group was the perfect choice based on the company’s unique business model, the exclusive partnerships already signed and the incredible market potential ahead of us.

It’s a nice blend of my past and current work; we’re dealing with entertainment franchises but it’s all about mobile media and franchising.

MTV: What is Pente Group doing in the arena of entertainment personalities on mobile?

MB: This has a lot of potential. If you look at the gaming industry, they have to invent new characters, create a brand. To create a franchise like Super Mario is hard to do. We looked at musical artists and consumer brands which don’t have a mobile presence or social media presence beyond Facebook. We thought, let’s start building a portfolio of apps and games based on personalities. It’s similar to a gaming point of view where you build a brand and franchise around it. With this, you already have a fan base but no presence in the mobile landscape, so it’s a strong match.

Our founder/CEO has all the contacts in the music industry which is how this is happening. My role is to beef up the management team and to get this to the right level. The company is in the start-up mode. In the past few years, the company did web development and services. We’re just beginning to release mobile apps; one app already in Apple’s store is a 99 cent shooting/soccer game with Akon that’s called Afrikon.

MTV: What’s coming up next?

MB: As soon as we have approval from Apple, we’ll be running a Polaroid app on iPhone, which lets you take a photo and put the white border Polaroid frame. There’s a social media component, so you can post the photo to Facebook, Twitter it, and so on.

The core of our business will be around musical acts, and we are in the midst of signing several. We’re building a roster around different artists and we’ll have a portfolio of apps around each one that will cater to the fan base. We have a whole pipeline of apps coming out in the next few months. With my experience of running product management for Kaydara, I’m making sure we have the right plans and process to make everything run perfectly.

MTV: Do you plan to incorporate video in any of your mobile apps?

MB: We’re not entering into this space but we’re keeping our eyes open, especially given my background. Nothing will prevent us from doing it; we’ll address each brand and its audience and we expect to make a lot of varied apps over the years. We’re working on a poker game with Akon for example.

MTV: When will Barry White be on mobile?

MB: We just signed Barry but can’t talk about what we’ll be doing yet. We explore the fan base and figure out what would be compelling for that brand.

MTV: Are your apps strictly for the Apple iPhone at the moment? And how will you price the apps?

MB: We’re starting with iPhone because the way Apple has done the store is perfect for our company. But we’re looking at Android and Blackberry. We’ll be doing apps for Facebook as well. The price of the apps will vary depending on the complexity of the game, from 99 cents to $4 or $5. We look at the sweet spot for each game and try to write prices that will work for the audience.

MTV: What do executives and creatives from Hollywood entertainment bring to the mobile world?

MB: It’s a good question. It used to be that you had to deal directly with carriers, and that made it difficult for those in entertainment to come in. The way they operate is very different than other industries. Apple and Google with the store environment, is similar to a software distribution channel. That’s one advantage we have: we know how it is to manage a channel. How we go to market in making our software for a customer base and going global is key if you want to hit big numbers in the mobile market. And it’s similar to entertainment accounts.

Your entry to the People’s Choice Award must contain one or more of the following: video, animation or graphics, which may also have an audio, text, interactive or other component. All formats are accepted, whether a short or long-form show, interview, ad, montage, game or hybrid thereof. All entries must be shot via a mobile phone and uploaded to the MEA You Tube Channel for viewing and scoring. The full range of genres is accepted excluding pornography, hate speech and content soliciting illegal activity. The MEA is neither responsible nor liable for the opinions, views or content expressed in People’s Choice entries.

The award will honor the individual or company with the best mix of creativity and technology shot using a mobile phone. The winner is chosen through direct vote by the Mobile Community and panel of judges via the MEA YouTube Channel at The winner will be invited to present their video at the Mobile Excellence Awards gala event in December in Los Angeles, which will be held on the Paramount Pictures lot.

Discovery's Rebecca Glashow

full-length programming of series such as Discovery Channel’s Cash Cab, Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs and Man vs. Wild and, from Animal Planet, River Monsters and Whale Wars, and, from Science Channel How It’s Made and Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.  When FLO TV launches its on-demand feature later this year, Discovery will offer content on demand.

MobilizedTV sat down with Rebecca Glashow, Senior Vice President of Digital Media Distribution at Discovery Communications to talk about the launch.

MobilizedTV: The obvious question is why Discovery launched a dedicated FLO channel when the Qualcomm CEO is openly talking about selling FLO.

Rebecca Glashow: I can’t comment on the future of FLO TV. They’e made a huge investment into the platform and they have, by far, the best quality video quality because of the broadcast nature of the service.

Mobile video hasn’t been adopted as quickly in the U.S. as we would have liked to see it. We’re all bumping up against that. They [FLO TV] continue to make investments in their direct-to-consumer business. Ultimately, we made the decision because we like the real estate and the other brands up there. And, we want to be on the platforms that our viewers might be on, especially if those platforms are subscription-based because we don’t give our content away for free. We’re not fans of advertiser-supported content. We believe in premium services where people pay to get access to our content. There are a handful of us who focus on that model. It’s about quality of video and being behind a pay wall–that’s where Discovery wants to be.

MTV: How long has this channel been in the works?

RB: We’ve had on-and-off conversations with FLO TV for a long time. We did a stunt with them last summer putting our Shark Week simulcast for a week on FLO TV. It was very successful and both parties were really happy with how it performed, so it allowed us the basis for a discussion of doing this more permanently.

MTV: What is your business arrangement with FLO TV?

RB: I can’t talk about the business relationship.

MTV: I know that Discovery has been involved in distributing content on the mobile platform for some time. Can you give me an update on Discovery’s mobile efforts?

RB: We have worked hard at being in the lead with mobile. As a team, we’ve been committed to that space for a long time. There continues to be a focus on mobile subscriptions. We’re on BitBop and we continue to work with our friends at MobiTV and with Verizon on the VCAST service. For premium, we still only release our long form video behind a subscription wall.

That being said, with the advent of smartphones, and acccess to the mobile web and the apps that have come out on the Android and iPhone, we needed to make sure we had a strong presence on all those platforms. We jumped in with several mobile apps for Android and iPhone. We built one around the Discovery Channel which launched in October;  it’s a free app and for that, we focused on short form video, games and information to engage our fans. It is not a pay-premium long-form video but an extension of our brand and TV shows on the mobile device. Then we did iPhone,iPad and Android apps with TLC and Animal planet and there we’ve focused on shows like Myth Busters that have a rabid fan base. It’s a deeper way for viewers to engage with talent and brand, with games, Facebook activities, and so on. It’s more of a marketing effort to make sure we’ve connected.

MTV: How do you differentiate between what you’re doing on the iPhone versus the iPad?

RB: We work very closely with outside developers and engage people at Apple to understand the differences between the platforms to make sure we’re taking care of the ‘cool’ factor. When we built Myth Busters for iPad, we built it for that platform: the video is optimized for the larger screen and there’s adifference in screen size.  There are also different ways to interact with the screen, and games that take advantage of the device.

That’s been a big focus for us in addition to the video, the premium video services.

MTV: Where do you see your mobile play vis-a-vis the U.S. broadcasters’ move into Mobile DTV?

RB: We’ve always been a dual revenue stream model. We can’t produce the quality of content on the networks in a one-stream model. We try to preserve the model in the cable space that works so well for us, in the mobile space.  Broadcasters schedule their networks in a very different way;  they bet a lot more on the first exhibition. For cable, we get a lot out of it, but we have evergreen, continued value. We feel that people are constantly discovering our shows after their initial run. So,w e have a different model, a different way of engaging our viewers.

MTV: Are there plans for any other premium long-form content models?

RB: With premium content, we’re focused on subscription. We obviously recognize that it’s been slower to get people paying for that premium service on their phones. At the same time, the devices are becoming more video-centric and there’s much greater demand…and there’s not a lot of high quality video out there for free. We’re coalescing around the idea that we can’t give away our content for free. We hope to be long-term partners with FLO but they’re not the only ones in this space who recognize this is the best model for premium content.

Interestingly enough, African-Americans and English-speaking Latinos are at the forefront of mobile web growth in the U.S. According to the Pew report, mobile handset ownership is higher among African-Americans and Latinos than among whites (87 percent versus 80 percent), with minority subscribers leveraging a much greater range of mobile data services. Approximately 64 percent of African-Americans now access the mobile web, growing from 57 percent in 2009. “Other cultural forces aside, minorities, lower-income households and younger adults access the Internet at higher rates on mobile devices because they often do not have computers at home,” said the New York Times in interpreting the data.

This interpretation jives with a way to look at mobile phones often missed by the majority culture: today’s mobile phone–especially smartphone–is actually a computer and, as such, a more affordable and accessible one for those in lower-income demographics. Add to that that the smartphone is a status symbol and a reflection of personal identity, and the reason why the smartphone is poised to grow in popularity, especially among demographics that might now have purchased a home computer.

The Pew report continues that although young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 remain the most intense consumers of mobile data, older adults are now significantly more likely to embrace functions aside from voice: 76 percent of U.S. adults now snap photos with their phones, up from 66 percent a year ago; 72 percent send and receive text messages (up from 65 percent), 34 percent play mobile games (up from 27 percent), 34 percent record videos (up from 19 percent) and 33 percent play music (up from 21 percent).

Hip hop and mobile share a demographic: urban youth who enjoy hip hop culture and regard their mobile phones as status symbols as much as communication devices. A local California entertainment company, Deziak Entertainment, is aiming directly at that demo with its mobile video channel Salacious Streets TV, which offers original hip hop content. “We focus on what’s hot in the streets; rappers, clubs, cars, concerts, fashion, and more,” said Deziak Entertainment Chief Content Officer Emery Morrison, who noted that Salacious Streets TV is on mobile networks in the U.S. and several foreign markets. With the international popularity of hip hop, no surprise perhaps that Salacious Streets TV is also in Canada, Malaysia,Australia,New Zealand, and parts of Africa and the Middle East.

TracFone Wireless just added Salacious Streets TV as an offering for its 15 million subscribers. This new content partnership increases Deziak Entertainment’s reach  to “no contract” subscribers. TracFone Wireless is a subsidiary of América Móvil S.A.B. de C.V., the fourth largest cell phone company in the world and the largest in the Americas with more than 200 million cell phone subscribers.

This deal follows on the heels of another that Deziak inked with A3 Media Network to make Salacious Streets TV available to the various mobile carriers subscribing to A3’s content distribution services. Created through a merger of 5280 Mobile and Brickhouse Mobile, A3 Media Network distributes media via multiple channels including mobile, digital device manufacturers, out-of-home networks, IPTV, and digital TV.

If you tune into Salacious Streets TV, you’ll find the following several programs:

Deziak Whips features the hottest custom and exotic cars and bikes on the streets. Weekly clip of pimped out cars, bikes and motorcycles and classic cars pre-1970 older, with an inside look at car shows, car clubs and custom vehicles owned by
rappers, singers, actors and entertainers from across the United States.

Rappers’ Delight is a segment show that is geared around hip hop events, marketing, hustling and hard work. Weekly clip of major and up-and-coming rappers, street poets, street teams, promoters, concerts and interviews . An inside view of how hip hop is born created and marketed and sold.

Salacious Snacks showcases edgy, wild content from break and jerk dancing to fashion shows and body painting. Weekly clip featuring graffiti artists, body painters, models, DJs,actors, poets, dancers and recording artists. Salacious Snack is whatever Deziak deems fresh, new, cutting edge from wardrobes, haircuts, verbal slang or the next new American creative phenomenon that will entertain the world.

Salacious Spits Hip Hop Show brings hip hop happenings and music videos to hip hop fans. The “mad poet” Xstasy E of Deziak Clan(and some of his homies) gives viewers hip hop happenings & music videos, with hip hop music videos from major and independent hip hop artists.

Other aggregators carrying Salacious Street TV are Mobi, Hutchison Whampoa LTD, Finemobile, Handmark, Playphone, and Arpuplus.

“We estimate  our total reach as of today is above 5 million viewers but  don’t know exact numbers since we have been up for three months on some carriers,” said Morrison. “This has exploded way beyond our initial expectations. .”

Morrison and his cousin Elgin Mack, who founded and run Deziak Entertainment, describe their company as “a branding and multimedia production company.” In addition to producing Salacious Streets TV, they head the hip-hop group Deziak Clan. Deziak Entertainment is also the urban liaison for Anheuser Busch/Inbev Distribution brand Ku Soju, and has also worked with Sprint/Nextel Corporation, Vidiator/Hutchison Whampoa, Ltd.,DivX, CBS/Viacom and Warner Brothers

In addition to the mobile network deals, Salacious Streets TV is available as an app for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad and an Android app. When the mobile Internet takes off, Salacious Streets TV is likely to garner even more fans.

“People love original urban content around the world,” said Morrison. “Our goal is to have Salacious Streets TV live on every mobile device worldwide.”

To get a deeper appreciation for Cracked.com’s move to iPad, MobilizedTV’s Debra Kaufman spoke with Katzeff about the launch.

MobilizedTV: Cracked.com actually had a fairly early move to mobile, in 2008, correct?

Oren Katzeff: May 2008 is when Cracked first launched a  mobile experience; we partnered with Quattro. Before that, we had the regular Cracked.com site that you could somewhat navigate on your mobile phone. There are so many different things that people come to our site for: reading articles, watching videos, looking at images. We also have a robust forum section. The question was, how do you come up with a mobile experience that covers everything?

Our first version of the iPhone app was approved on Feb. 15, 2010, just in time for Valentine’s Day. We are also currently working on an Android app right now, which is due to be released within the next four to six weeks. On BlackBerry, we’re still looking at the market. It’s undetermined whether we’ll build an app.

MTV: I hear you’ve enhanced your mobile website as well.

iPad landing page

OK: We’re revising our overall mobile look and feel right now. In the original mobile website, you had to navigate through the site as people would on the browser version. So, for example, with a BlackBerry, you had to move the trackball all over the screen. We built an enhanced offering that made it easier to access the content they go to the site for. We broke down the Cracked site and looked at the areas that people went to most: features, image, columnists, category sections.

Now that we’re creating more and more content, there is a need for that mobile experience to be refreshed more frequently.  We’re also looking at making the mobile experience more user interactive, so users can can do the same things, like participating in contests, that they do when they go to the website.

MTV: What kind of research did you do to hone in on the changes you needed to make to the mobile site?

OK: We’ve look at what people enjoy doing on our site, and we are doing a lot of research and notetaking on the sites of other companies we admire and respect. Everyone from The New York Times to Huffington Post …sites that produce a lot of content and have users who go there on a daily basis. Our content breakdown is  70 percent text and 30 percent video. So one thing we really looked at constantly enhancing is how we display articles in an elegant fashion.

MTV: What is it about the iPad that makes it a good fit for Cracked.com?

OK: There are three buckets. One, iPad allows you to have this HiDef look of your content. The articles jump off the screen. You can navigate through each photo very elegantly and easily, jumping from contest to content. The video also pops up off the screen. The content looks fantastic. The second is that it allows us to offer advertisers very unique placement opportunities. The landing page is made to look like the Cracked break room with a soda machine, bar stools and a table. On that screen, we have the ability to skin the videogame machine with an advertiser, put up a movie poster. There are a lot of cool interesting things we can do that integrates playfully into the landing page. Third, this app has allowed us to add additional content that’s on the site today. We give our users’ a bonus, an Editor’s Picks section that is hand-picked by the editors. This is our way to interact with our readers. We’re also going to be updating the landing page very regularly. It’s a fun page that we can decorate for the Super Bowl or Christmas. There’s a lot that the iPad allows you to do and we plan on taking advantage of it.

MTV: Describe the demographic of the Cracked.com audience.

OK: This was a 52-year old brand, a magazine that was competitive with Mad magazine. We shut the publication down in 2007 and and placed an emphasis on the dotcom component. On Google analytics, we were doing 500, 000 to 700,000 uniques a month. Now we’re doing 7 million, so there’s been explosive growth. The way we’ve grown has been to define what kind of comedy we are. There are a lot of players in the comedy area. For us, the way we look at our comedy is that it’s comedy with a college education, intelligent humor, based in real news. As a result, we’ve built an audience that’s intelligent with a sense of humor, such as The Five Most Bad-Ass Presidents of All Time. We find ways to write things that are informative as well as funny. The demo is primarily male 18 to 34, which you might expect with comedy. But we’re  32 percent female, and we’re not specifically thinking of the male demo. We look at it as the SNL audience;  some is geared more towards men, some towards women. In terms of loyalty, ComScore data for June 2010 showed that users stay for just north of 6 minutes, which puts us in the top 2 or 3 comedy sites in the world.  Cracked is one of the leading sites in terms of visits per visitor. The visitors coming directly to the site is also increasing.

MTV: What have you learned so far being on the iPad

OK: The iPad in general, given the bigger screen and ease of use and inreractivity presents a whole new world of possibilties. The iPad adoption rates have been solid. When we look at our own metrics, we’ve seen 48 percent growth in visits from iPads; usage is growing and will only continue to grow It allows an intimate visual advertising experience that you don’t necessarily get online. We plan to explore every possibility on the landing page and within the content as well. The technology is so new, so our message to advertisers is to work hand in hand to create a successful advertising campaign. With the dotcom, we wanted to try new things to integrate advertisers, and we’re taking the same approach with the iPad, creating visually appealing, interactive campaigns that will be the first of its kind and working with advertisers to monetize them.

There are currently over 250,000 iPhone apps and 70,000 Android apps, according to AdMob. BlackBerry, Nokia’s Symbian and Palm’s webOS are three other operating systems with app stores. Juniper Forecast recently reported that the annual number of consumer-oriented application downloads is expected to increase to more than 25 billion by 2015.

All entrants will be acknowledged with write-ups, screenshots and a “Download Now” button on the Mobile Apps Showdown website. From all the entries submitted, 25 semi-finalists will be selected by tech veteran Robin Raskin and a team of mobile experts. The online community will also have a chance to vote for their favorites.

The top ten finalists move on to a live demo competition in front of a live and online 2011 International CES audience and a winner will be declared based on an audience applause-o-meter and an online vote.

Winners will be picked from each of five platform categories: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, and Palm Web OS.  There will be a winner from the online voters as well as from the live audience vote at the Mobile Apps Showdown.

The Mobile Apps Showdown is an event by tech veteran Robin Raskin, who also created the extremely popular CES competition, Last Gadget Standing. In addition, Raskin and her company, Living in Digital Times, produce six CES-based TechZones and conference programs that feature technology and lifestyle, including technology for Health, Baby Boomers, Kids, Moms, Higher Education, and Sports and Fitness.

At the 2010 International CES, Clixtr won the live competition, while Gwabbit took home the online prize.  Clixtr is a mobile app that turns smartphones into smartcameras. Its users create events, upload mobile photos, and create real-time event photo streams with the users around them.  The online winner, Gwabbit, provides automatic email contact management (ECM) solutions for the contact cloud that automatically searches and identifies contacts embedded in emails and adds or updates that information to your information in a single click.

Rules of the competition

1. You must submit your applications before Nov. 31, 2010.

2. Your application must be available to the public now or delivered by Q2 of 2011.

3. Semi-finalists (25) and finalists (10) are selected from among all entrants by a panel of journalists and experts from the Netshelter Technology Media network.

4. Semi-finalists and finalists will participate in an online vote, which will affect, but not necessarily determine, the winners. (Judges will have the final word and the votes need to be checked for duplicates.)

5. Only finalists – 10 in all – will present at the Mobile Apps Showdown live event at the 2011 Consumer Electronic Show. The winner of the live event will be selected by the live audience.

For more information:  
akanarek@earthlink.net, (800) 553-2399; (949)422-9399