On April 8, Apple revealed version 4.0 of the iPhone’s operating system, marking their latest major upgrade to the revolutionary device that redefined the smart-phone competitive landscape.

An iPhone app displaying an HTC banner ad using the traditional ad delivery model we see on all current smart phones.

The new upgrade brings a number of features (over 100) that iPhone and iPad users and application developers have been yearning for. New features include multitasking, having a choice between individual email inboxes or a unified inbox, and the ability to organize your home screen apps into folders. OS 4 will be available to users in the summer of 2010.

For users of VoIP apps like Skype, new multitasking will allow VoIP apps to work in the background while you use your iPhone for other things, and even when your phone is off! This means that your VoIP call will ring through like a regular telephone call.

For Skype users who make international calls using free calling over WIFI (like me!), this feature finally provides true phone cloning and removes the issue of not being able to make or receive on-demand calls to/from your Skype contacts because their application is not turned on.

To people in the online/mobile ad business, a more exciting and trend-setting feature is Apple’s new mobile advertising platform: iAd. Below is Apple’s description of the iAd platform:

iAd, Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads. Today, when users click on mobile ads they are almost always taken out of their app to a web browser, which loads the advertiser’s webpage. Users must then navigate back to their app, and it is often difficult or impossible to return to exactly where they left. iAd solves this problem by displaying full-screen video and interactive ad content without ever leaving the app, and letting users return to their app anytime they choose. iPhone OS 4 lets developers easily embed iAd opportunities within their apps, and the ads are dynamically and wirelessly delivered to the device. Apple will sell and serve the ads, and developers will receive an industry-standard 60 percent of iAd revenue.

With iAd, Apple once again proves their dominance in the area of providing game-changing innovations to the market place. This new way of delivering ads within mobile applications is poised to improve click-through rates for advertisers, and will become the new standard that other mobile platforms (Blackberry, Android, Symbian, etc.) have to measure up against when delivering ad content through their applications. No longer will it be acceptable to kick the user out of the app they’re using whenever they click on an ad!

The iAd also provides Apple with a new revenue stream, marking the company’s entry into ad serving. Together with iTunes and the new iBooks store, iAd is yet another bold step in Apple’s strategy of vertical integration.

Additional information on the OS 4 can be found in Apple’s press release. In the video below, Steve Jobs demonstrates some of the features mentioned of the new operating system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-76oq_AHHg

This phone comes with a variety of attachments to allow the owner to switch between flutes, harmonicas, trumpets, etc.

Kilian-Nakamura.com notes additional musician/DJ mobile phone instruments that were unveiled at the exhibit, including a folding DJ scratch pad and synthesizer, a string-instrument cell phone, air-drum sticks, and keyboard instrument.

Mobile phone innovation is no big thing in Japan. Fierce competition by the three main mobile service providers (Docomo, KDDI, and Softbank) in the trend-loving Japanese market had already produced technologies years ahead of anything we have in North America or Europe (let alone Canada’s dinosaur rate of adoption of new mobile technologies). Japanese consumers today use their mobile phone as an all-in-one lifestyle device. Phones are used as mini-TVs, email/internet devices, credit cards, RFID swipe cards, and for virtual gaming to name a few.

The early July launch of the iPhone in Japan (same day as its launch in Canada) was preceded by speculations of poor uptake in a market where the ‘wow’ factor of the iPhone is eclipsed by existing technologies. (A previous blog post about the iPhone’s in Japan can be found here). However, early stats seem to show that the exclusive provider (Softbank) is raking in subscriptions that may have boosted their market ranking from number three (behind KDDI) to number two for the month of July.

However, skeptics still believe that the uptake is only a small percentage of the market, most likely comprised of “gaijin” (foreigners/outsiders) and Apple enthusiasts. They predict that the growth is unsustainable and will not crossover into mainstream Japanese consumers due to the lack of gadgetry in the iPhone (e.g. to use the phone as a charge card or watch Japanese digital television during daily commute).

It is almost depressing to talk about cell phone technologies while I sit in Canada, unable to blog through my mobile phone due to crippling data usage rates that restrict non-corporate consumers from shedding the tethers of connectivity and relying on the chains of home/office networks to communicate and innovate.

Japan’s oligopoly resulted in constant competition to provide consumers with better cheaper mobile technologies, while Canada’s big three (Rogers, Bell Aliant, and Telus) appear to have a silent price-fixing agreement. High cell phone and data rates in Canada are preventing entire industries from taking off due to low uptake of cellphone internet usage. Mobile internet commerce, application, and game development for the cell phone industry in Canada is near obsolete.

When was the last time you saw a job posting seeking “mobile application developers” in Canada?

As an iconic part of the New York City skyline, the Chrysler Building has been depicted countlessly in almost every medium—film, photography, video games, art, advertising, music, literature, and even fashion, as its use quickly establishes without doubt the location in which the depicted events are occurring. (Wikipedia)

The purchase marks yet another major North American investment by a Middle Eastern fund. Gulf countries, flush with revenues from unprecedented oil prices, are taking that extra cash and pouring it back into the countries who paid for the oil in the first place.

In Canada, foreign ownership is a sensitive political issue. Critics decry the so called ‘hollowing-out’ of corporate Canada, and warn of its effect on national security and sovereignty interests. Meanwhile, other countries with friendlier ownership regulations are realizing the positive effects of free markets. Businesses, consumers, and shareholders enjoy increases in wealth, competitive services, and exchange/transfer of global expertise.

The Canadian discussion on foreign ownership rules heated up last month with the release of the 65 recommendations arrived at by the Competition Policy Review Panel after a one-year study commissioned by the federal government (click here for report). The panel concluded that “the federal government needs to scrap its ban on bank mergers, lighten up its foreign ownership restrictions of uranium and airline assets, and liberalize the telecommunications industry“, reported the Globe and Mail.

Shortly after the release of the panel’s recommendations on foreign ownership, the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) countered the study with a report arguing that Canada needs less foreign ownership, not more. Readers of this blog who are from Atlantic Canada may remember that the CCPA is the organization that vehemently argued against Atlantica and the proposal led by AIMS (Atlantic Institute for Market Studies). Click here for a previous blog post that discussed the confrontation in more detail.

The recommendations regarding the telcom sector specially hit close to home with many Canadians. The existing oligopoly of wireless providers in Canada has seen increasing criticism in the past few months. In the spotlight are exuberant data charges highlighted by the advent of the iPhone which will hit Canadian shelves for the first time tomorrow exclusively through Rogers Wireless.

Bell Aliant (BCE) and Telus Mobility are also under fire for announcing the introduction of new charges for each text message received by cell phone users unless they subscribe to a monthly plan. Many consumers feel that the competitive landscape in the telcom sector is unfriendly to the needs of the consumer.

While protectionists scorn the findings of the Competition Policy Review Panel, they fail to address a real hollowing-out currently taking place in Canada: existing foreign owners abandoning their Canadian assets and relocating elsewhere.

A rising Canadian dollar coupled with expensive union demands is leaving Ontario with an Auto Workers crisis as American auto plants shut down operations and moved out of Canada to friendlier markets. Atlantic provinces have been experiencing a drain of skilled workers for some time now as various plant shut-downs force skilled workers to relocate to western Canada in search of jobs.

So where will the next billion dollars of oil money be invested? Most likely not in Canada.