ouroboros

Product Haiku

 Heidi Cody rules.  I mean, c'mon.  Product haiku?  Seriously.  Sweeeeet.  5-7-5, holmes.  Check it.

"Getting it" and "Not Getting It"

Random thoughts.  You've heard the saw: some agencies "get it", some "don't get it". 

Seems to boil down generally to this:

• "digital" shops tell you "traditional" shops don't get (meaning, of course, 'understand' or 'do well') "digital", "social media", "viral marketing", or a host of specific functionalities - e.g., SEM, SEO, mobile development, etc., etc., etc.
• "traditional" shops tell you "digital" shops don't "get" "branding", "craft", "storytelling", or "advertising".

Behind those two positions are a few things, including:

• creative control, as in, "who's that stupid traditional agency to judge the unparraleled brilliance of my interactive idea when they don't know s--- about interactive or the specific nuances of the digital ecosphere?"; or, "who the hell are those untalented f-ers at the digital shop without a conceptual bone in their bodies to tell me about engaging brand stories when the best they can muster is a s--- tech app 'because its cool or because they can', rather than 'because its spot on with brand strategy?"
• client relationships (and with it, fees).  Digital shops often look to go straight to the client because they don't believe traditional folks they occasionally have to partner with understand their ideas well enough to represesent them effectively to the client, and traditional folks see digital folks talking about their ideas in isolation from the bigger picture - the old "if the only tool you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem
• The belief at many shops that "interactive is still an unproven medium being heavily pushed by the uninformed out of fear or because the market is telling them they have to", or that "interactive is the fundamental game changer that renders all previous communication prosaic and dated".

The problem?  Everyone is right.

More later.

I <3 NY.

What is it about our NYC office?

Moo-Moo Screwed

Moo-moo screwed
Originally uploaded by rennygleeson

Moo-Moo's been missing since February. In an area crawling with foxes and coyotes. It's July. Great sketch, but people: move on.

Radiohead + Google = pretty OK computer

OK - wow.  Radiohead + Google Data Visualization?  Sick.

How will we roll?

A stumper has been why the Mayans, for whom wheels were both sacred (in the forms of their calendaring and astrological systems) and mundane (in the form of wheeled childrens' toys) never 'discovered' the use of wheels as a tool for facilitating transport.  No wagons.  No hand carts.

In the future, what will they look back on us with disbelief saying "how could they have missed THAT application of technology?"

At least now you can get Maya wheels.

Clarification

<personal>
I got a comment on this, and it worried me - for the record, I was being sarcastic in my 'bio' when I said I "worked in video games until I became so wealthy I needed work only for love."  I hope my video game pals got the (bad) joke, but for anyone who actually thought I was carried in on a velvet pillow every day and ate peeled grapes and bonbons while living off the royalties from the episodic/node-based historical-narrative games I built in my youth - please revise your mental map. 

In spite of my best efforts, I am not fantastically wealthy, but I am happy knowing I do save lives every day by working in advertising, rather than being a doctor as my folks suggested.  Repeatedly.

</personal>

Virtual Passports

Marshall Kirkpatrick @ RWW has a great post summarizing  the Linden Lab/OpenSim Avatar portability brouhaha that's well worth the read.  I checked in there and a few other places, and what's happening is pretty significant.  Full scope TBD, but the implications spread well beyond today's parochial definitions of immersive worlds as bad 3D geek free range farms.

While we are building walls to prevent real world migration, the virtual world is lowering them.  In what seems an announcement made to be mocked by my friends of less techincal (read: geeky) persuasion, Linden Labs and IBM have announced the first teleport of an avatar from one virtual worldspace (Second Life - Preview Grid, specifically) to another (OpenSIM, IBM's virtual worldspace).

Why is this big?

• The investment of time and money one puts into Avatar creation can now be amortized over multiple meta-verses.  Meaning geeks get more for their virtua-buck and virtua-sweat equity, and hopefully, n00bs see the walls come down enough to jump in and try it out themselves.
• Virtual worlds right now suck for a couple of reasons - limited graphic capability, unstable operating environments, "walled-garden"-itis, etc. - but they do offer a way to make the dataverse under the multi-metaverse visually navigable (a la Minority report pre-crime analytics division).  Making the data sets interoperable may make it possible (and therefore more financially attractive) to create interoperable functional module ports - for example, a cross-metaverse soda shop where cokes can be dispensed and transported by a virtual-rollerskated waitstaff to the window of your idling SL car, Eve hovercraft, Warcraft guild wagon, Open-Sim Gremlin, etc.

Interesting questions this raises:

• Virtual citizenship - if my avatar dataset/experience is portable, does it matter from which metaverse I originate?  If my Coke avatar can go to SL, will I prefer to originate from one or the other and why?  Will I as Coke give you value/make it worth your time to originate from my zone - and what benefit will I (Coke) derive from your investment in my metaverse?
• The test didn't allow for virtual good transfer (as Lee Maicon noted, just like in real life "you can't take it with you") so does that lead to a new class of transferable goods mediated/managed my a virtual UN?
• Will this give rise to the long prophesied "virtual agents" - automated semi-sentient virtual you's that cruise the multi-metaverse like space probes?  And what happens when you meet V'ger?
• Avatar portability and data portability have significant parallels in terms of ultimate user control (ownership) of their virtual experiences - given that an avatar is ultimately just data (but with a generally more anthropomorphic UI) - will these two movements blend seamlessly?  What are the similarities/differences?
• Will this give rise to a multi-metaverse service industry?  Transport rest stops, outworld neutral negotiation zones (like those hotels on the NJ side of the Holland Tunnel?), flop joints and virtual houses of untraceable ill repute?  Sweeeeeeeet.

American Brandstand BS

Piece in today's NYT entitled "American Brandstand" focusing on brands stepping into the sucking void left by the "whipsawing" of the music business by "digital technology" completely misses the point.  The bigger story isn't about brands underwriting music - it's about traditional command and control distribution models being exposed as costly barriers to innovation and emotional connection rather than facilitators.  It's about a digitally-enabled new playing field and new players popping up in industries where they weren't expected.  That's a story - and one that will rewrite a lot of marketing playbooks.

Which should all be burned anyway.

This "whipsawing" crap is an excuse you hear in a lot of industries facing the digital tsunami and chosing to go down in their cellars rather than get out the boards and surf - the music industry industry didn't just "miss" the digital distribution revolution - they ignored it because their financial self-interest was wedded to another model.  When Hurricane Fanning hit the music business, the klaxons shouldn't have sounded only in the lawyers' suites - the business brains and creative hearts needed to sit down and ask themselves what their industry proposition was.  Maybe they'd have realized they weren't in the "music" business, they were printing houses whose medium of delivery was being eclipsed.  The future, now presently emergent,  business is "music experience" or "music supply" - regardless of format - and still offers phenomenal opportunity.

And then a couple of folks go on record in the article saying it's "not about the money".  Bilge.  Of course it is.  This isn't the corporate responsibility group doing these deals - the intention is to associate and by association drive sales.  Or you don't do it.  And for the bands, it's promotion.  And distribution.  And ultimately...oh right - revenue.

Richard Bishop of Cornerstone had a nice sound bite:
“I think in the world today, it doesn’t make a difference to the consumer if a record comes out on Warner Music, EMI, Red Bull or Diesel Jeans.  Artists may be better advised to put their music out with a brand to get better reach and bigger advertising.” 

Damn straight. 

Smart artists are using every loophole they can to explore new possibilities.  They are trying to extricate themselves from the burning building of the old music industry, while the record business is still running room to room trying to douse the flames with single-serve Evian bottles.

The story for me here is that while the lame end of the music business is floundering through a slow motion car wreck  trying to maintain their command and control CD-printing model,  new music experience/music supply players - iTunes, brands, movies, video games, you name it - are stepping in.

So where will this happen next?  Well...what's another command and control production distribution model?  Oh...how about...movies?  TV?  Books?  Games?  Advertising?

Brands with money to spend to create powerful emotional connections have the world at their fingertips.  But it's a messy world, to put it mildly.  Some will execute well, becoming new gatekeepers and kingmakers.  More will tank this thing, with their delicious brand mismatches and missteps excrutiatingly well documented.

We are all experimenting.  The brand lab is huge.  Music is just one tool - look for brands in more businesses than you'd expect.

Beware the Rainbow Trout-erwocky

From its first appearance as a fictional setting in an H.P. Lovecraft novel to its current incarnation as a tourist attraction, Oregon is home to some funky stuff, including the fish hatcheries at the Bonneville Dam, home of "Herman the Sturgeon".

Within those dread hatcheries swim "Rainbow Trout", or as my family now refers to them, "Lurking Flesh Reapers".  Oh sure, something about watching fish the size of small dogs churn the water to a froth going after the "pellet food" you buy by the twenty-five cent handful should have given a hint, but nooooo.  Since petting the fish is an automatic federal fine, let's just say "someone else's child" was petting the fish when the sucker took a monster chomp on their 2.5 year old's finger. 

One rule I found on the Bonneville Hatchery website afterwards was this: "Never place hands or foreign objects in water or try to touch the fish.  This is very harmful to them."  Well, it's apparently harmful for two reasons - one: contact with the fish can remove some of their protective coating and render them susceptible to waterborne infections and the like (hence the entirely appropriate fine); two: they may bite off your fingers and choke.

Floating Death

So in summary:

• Petting a Rainbow Trout in a Federally maintained hatchery can subject you to a (well-deserved) fine.
• Placing your idiot fingers near a hungry Rainbow Trout can result in getting bit by a Rainbow Trout.
• Rainbow Trout have teeth, and a bite from one can cause serious shredding.

Grumpy Gamer

Grumpy Gamer screenshot via Gamasutra's Ron Gilbert Interview:

"On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness", or, something growing in the Greenhouse?

Penny Arcade's 'Tycho and Gabe' + Hothead Games = a PAX attendee fever dream: a witty, snarky, steampunk-flavored 2D episodic insiders' downloadable game from PA's + Hothead's "PlayGreenhouse", a recent and potentially credible indie-game download site...from the guys that normally rip crap games to shreds. 

According to Greenhouse's 'About Us':

"Greenhouse [offers indie developers] technical flexibility and know-how...we believe that interesting, new games are being made all the time...we'd like to be the venue for those games."

May 2008: 592 MM of China's 1.3B have mobile phones

Wow.  Not only is that huge from an ownership, personal use and network effect standpoint, consider "China's Mobile Revolution", by Michael Sheridanin, from the UK's 8 June Sunday Times.

"The mobile phone came of age in China...when [the] earthquake ripped through Sichuan province...victims used their phones to call for rescue, soldiers used civilian networks to organize supplies, families used text messages to exchange news of survival or loss and an increasingly angry group of citizens spread word of protests against corruption and lax building standards. The national conversation kept going thanks to a military-style logistics operation by the rival phone companies.

So integrated is the mobile communications device into Chinese society that the authorities have been puzzling for ages over the best way to channel investment for the future...[but] the government may soon discover that regulating the telecoms providers is a minor challenge compared with controlling the citizens who will ultimately use their services to communicate with each other."

In a January post Emily Turrettini noted ABCnet.au's report on "the ability of the Chinese Government to spy on the country's 500 million mobile phone users."  According to ABCnet, "Wang Jianzhou, head of China Mobile, stunned delegates [to the World Economic Forum in Davos] by revealing that the company had unlimited access to the personal data of its [300MM] customers and handed it over to Chinese security officials when demanded. 'We know who you are, but also where you are,' said the CEO."

Thank goodness OUR government and telco operators would never compromise our privacy like that...oh heck.

W+Kisms, 07.01.08

So one of those days.  Talking with Elisa Silva when the room hums and the light dims and Portland gets hit by a blizzard in July.  Only, it's not a blizzard - its a bajillion bees bouncing off the windows, scooting up over the roof and coming to rest on the roof deck.  In the recently placed potted shrubs.

They calmed down into a mind-boggling, solid ball of bee-ness.

Had to call a beekeeper off the swarm list (you know, the hot list of available folks willing to duck out of their day job, don a reentry suit, and come pack off your Portland metro errant swarms.  No - seriously.)

On top of that, John Jay's coffee cup got lifted.  John Jay's coffee mugs are works of art, each far cooler than any of us will ever be.  This the latest to be pilfered:

Yes, my wife would have prefered this to the dime store ring she actually got for marrying me.

what's with my cabdriver?

OMG - Nokia buys Symbian, MSoft screwed? Google kneecapped?

This is going to take a lot to process.  And there's a lot to be worked out (what does "royalty-free to members of the alliance" mean in practice?  Will this be Open like Linux, or 'Open' like...brrrr...AT&T/Verizon Wireless?). 

But OMG, IN YOUR FACE, iPhone (6MM handset sold US, 10MM projected by years end) and Google Android Handsets (None sold, nor to be sold soon):  Nokia (1 Billion handsets in market) just got all 'Open-Source' Symbian on you.

"On Tuesday, companies including Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics and Vodafone announced that they will work together to make the Symbian OS open source. They will offer it under a royalty-free license to members of a new nonprofit group called the Symbian Foundation.

Symbian is used in about 60 percent of the world's smartphones [~200MM handsets], which means that open-source software will soon drive the majority of those devices. The proprietary model behind mobile operating systems from Microsoft, Research In Motion and Apple, then, will for the first time be in the minority."

- Nancy Gohring, IDG News Services, Symbian Shifts Mobile World to Open Source, for PC World

Golly. 

200MM handsets in market using Symbian.  Sure there will be legacy issues with handsets running older Symbian software, but c'mon.  Microsoft's like "yeah, no worries.  We don't see much of a change in the short term based on this announcement".  That's like the Titanic's captain saying "well, in the light of news about an iceberg dead ahead, we see no need to alter our current course".  Dude, did you read the FREE part?  The market leader against whom MSoft is struggling for dominance in the mobile OS market [Symbian] just made their product free.  Microsoft CHARGES people to use their mobile OS.

"It's unclear whether device manufacturers will want to continue paying high fees for Windows Mobile license when [Nokia] the market leader suddenly cut costs to zero." - J. Nicholas Hoover, Symbian's Open Source Gambit Ups Stakes in Mobile OS War, for Information Week

Really?  Unclear whether people will want to pay for something they can have for free?

Nokia just made a BOLD MOVE. 

Some say they've grabbed their future, others that they've just opened up mobility.  Good piece over at ZDNet byEd Burnette discusses Symbian deal winners and Losers.

Participatory Global Viral Video - how many more 2.0 words can you fit in and still have a failed marketing strategy?

Viral viral viral.  If you read my blog, you know I hate the term.  It isn't a term anyone agrees on, other than "viral marketing agencies" who are trying to sell it like special sauce.  For the most part, that sauce is brown, lumpy and unpredictable, like the "gravy" you get at Applebee's.  Marketers like the concept of 'viral', because to them it means "cheap media" (make a video, or app, or whatever, and distribution is FREE!), or it lets them say they "get social media" to whoever is checking off the boxes on their annual evaluation form.  But nothing is viral that PEOPLE DON'T LIKE, and figuring out WHAT PEOPLE WILL LIKE is a game everyone can play, but few play well.  Which is why most advertising SUCKS.

We've had some good hits - the Kobe jumps Aston + snakes, the FIFA Street 3 spot, etc., but it is, to a degree, a gamble.  Like a good date.

So a video folks are talking about is this one for Stride gum, found by Melissa Sconyers on the NY Nokia Search team.

It's worth a look for two reasons: (1) it shows the power of participatory community, which is actually more interesting than the concept OR the execution, and (2) it shows how jumping onto a popular video may or may not be right for a brand.  At the end of this video, do you get that this is actually a marketing vehicle for Stride gum?  I didn't.  And I knew it before I watched, then I even clicked through to Matt's site, looking for a logo or brand mention (the logo is there, at the bottom of the page, looking very Dad at the disco). 



The story of the video as Matt tells it:
He has friend shoot video of him dancing badly in Hanoi.  Stride gum sends him around the world to do the dance in a wide variety of places (normal "YouTube-viral-type-web-2.0-3.0" thing).  But AFTER that video was made and posted, people sent him their own.  And that gave him an idea.  He re-pitched Stride with a new idea.  He traveled the world again, inviting those people to join him.  Participatory viral goes global.

Read more here:
http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/about.shtml (the website is sponsored by Stride)

And please practice safe viral.

Design - High and Low

Got a review copy of Adaptive Path's "Subject to Change".  I'm 100 painful pages in to this 160 page book that seems so far to be at least 100 pages too long.  In a nutshell: think about design.  Oh - and think different.  There.  You don't have to buy one.   The "quotes-by-interesting-people" sprinkled throughout the book only serve to show you that meaningful ideas and insightful thoughts lie elsewhere - in other books that you've probably ALREADY READ.  I am forcing my way through it just to see if there's a twist that reveals this isn't just an painfully long and patronizing Adaptive Path credentials presentation.  If there is, I'll glady come back and revise this entry.

Contrast that with Undoboy's new site.

 "Design Brings Happiness" he suggests, then he sells it to you in the form of his Superbastard toys.  Short, sweet, to the point.  Elegant.

Neil Perkin's Rocking Presentation on the Changing Physics of Media. Please watch it.

If you haven't seen it yet, you probably didn't catch Charlie the Unicorn before it got 20MM views.

| View

I Love Wordle

Cut and paste a [poem, blog entry, research report, etc.] into the Wordle box.  Wordle will create a visual "Word Cloud" - with relative word size based on the frequency with which that word appears in the passage. 

To try it out, I cut and pasted the complete text of Ecclesiastes (King James Version) into Wordle, and this is what I got:

When I cut and pasted Summize results for Coke, this is what I got:

Try dragging a speech, a brief, or research report into it.  Basically, another way to find underlying themes - but with a graphic twist.  And yes, you can change font, colors, etc.

"Karp Rocks", or "The Innovator's Dilemma", or "My Shiny New Mantra"

Thank you, Publishing 2.0.  Scott Karp's "Google AdWords: A Brief History of Online Advertising Innovation" is a post well worth the read for a look back to when Google's global supremacy was not a foregone conclusion.  In it, Karp lays out the historical context and decisions that set Skynet on their current trajectory.

At the article's conclusion, Karp says this:

"The challenge of innovation is that we are all boxed in by what we know, by our assumptions about how things work...The next Google-like innovation is right in front of us — we just need to see past our own assumptions."

"Forget what you know."

A life philosophy in four words.

Google on Mobile Advertising

From Reuters, from an on-stage interview by Ken Auletta of Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

"Speaking of the emerging market for Web-based advertising on mobile phones, Schmidt said the vast majority of Google searches on mobile phones were done on Apple Inc's year-old iPhones, which prominently feature a Web browser."

'Mobile looks like it will ultimately be the highest of ad rates,' because ads can be targeted by user location, he said."

Is Canoe the Cable Industry's Maginot Line?

The eBay TV ad auction marketplace died a quiet death.  The only real surprise was that this DOA defensive action's demise even warranted a story.  As I recall, this "coalition of the billing" was created to try to keep Google out of broadcaster knickers (Google was at the time looking for broadcasters to partner with to test their own auction-based TV model, and no-one wanted them mucking around in the special sauce.  eBay was easier.  Less threatening.  And uncompetitive).  With no real mandate, poor funding, lackluster participation and an agenda driven by fear, not innovation, I'm honestly surprised it lasted this long.  Did they finally go through all the stationary they had printed up?  Run out of creamers and call it a day? 

Next up: Canoe.  As in 'up the creek without a paddle'.  The cable industry sees Canoe as "[their] solution to the growing amount of ad dollars flowing to the Web."  David Verklin (ex-Aegis/Carat) had this to say:

"We will have all of this new data and features that can prove to clients that people are actually watching the ads."

Darn.  He could have said a lot of things.  Things like "I'm excited to examine how we can continue to improve our value proposition and provide real value for our customers and marketers?" or "Advertisers need to create more compelling viewer engagement experiences and we're here to help them make sense of the opportunities", or "Brands needs to serve their brand communities more effectively in an era of infinite choice", or "Cable and broadcast still command massive audiences and we are seeking new more creative ways to leverage those effectively for advertisers and respectfully for viewers?".   Naaaah.

TV (cable and broadcast) isn't going away.  Not by a long shot.  Among other things, it's getting smarter and more interactive.  Does the cable industry really need an industry group stuffed with folks not incented to innovate OR collaborate?  Heck - I was a sales guy once.  Damned if I'd have given over my best inventory - the stuff I could count on to help me hit my numbers - to a 'consortium' for the 'good of the industry'.

"Something that may concern programmers -- and damp enthusiasm: Because targeted advertising theoretically offers more bang for the marketing buck, advertisers may end up reducing their overall cable spend."

Unless there's more here than meets the eye (and there may be), Canoe, like the eBay SNAFU, strikes me as another Maginot line for an industry in need of forward motion.  Canoe may last - but not in this incarnation, and not with this roster of participants. 

"Why I HATE 360 marketing", or "VZW suffers from AT&T retention strategy jedi mind tricks"

This is the tray table I folded down on my American Airlines Flight.  I felt so dirty.  Like by unfolding the tray I was "opting in" to their ad.  "No, no", thought I.  Then I accepted a drink (seltzer,  baby, everytime!), and had to put it somewhere.

Damned by my own thirst.

I already had no room.  Getting the "can you hear me now guy" in my lap - boy, what a treat.  Did business class and First get this crap, too?  No clue.  But boy - a few hours of this smug gal and the irritating pitch hack dude - wow - do I HATE them now.  VZW's media agency probably got a great deal - can't you hear the pitch?   "Just think - high value target audience, limited visual distractions - and if they're delayed?  JACKPOT, BABY!  They may be trapped without food or water for hours on the tarmac at SFO, but you'll OWN them!"  (And the green jacket: wtf?  Niiiice propping.).  With rising aviation fuel prices, I gotta imagine this will only get worse.  I have nasty visions of being delayed at O'Hare in a cabin stickered up like a NASCAR vehicle, begging for the only food and drink on board: Brawndo and piss-flavored Chex snack bags.  For $14 dollars.  Exact change, please.

Hey - here's some "360 marketing" - put a person on the transcontinental flight who CLEANS THE BATHROOM after each use.  NOW I like your brand.  Barring that, put "can you hear me now" guy's face on the toilet paper.

Mobile Gaming and the iPhone

Opinion piece by Keith Boesky (ex-Eidos president) over on Gamasutra poses the question "Will Apple reinvent the mobile games space?"  While he doesn't mention N-Gage or Google Android OS, he raises some interesting points re: the financial implications/business opportunity for publishers, and the possibility for a "new age of gaming" where developers can build apps in their garage for love and for cheap again.

Key takeaways:

• 2.5 billion mobile "non-iPhones" globally, ~2% of them have downloaded ANY applications = install base ~50 million.  iPhone to top 10MM (est.) units sold this year, most will download apps (or sideload them through iTunes).  Arguably iPhone = 16% of the GLOBAL market for downloadable mobile apps.  (note: To enhance Nokia Game selling possibilities, Nokia is pre-loading N-Gage software on many of their devices.)
• Too often, Boesky notes, "Mobile games are developed to lowest tech specs" to allow maximal porting (the ability to redeploy a game on another device or form factor relatively cheaply), but apps built to lowest common denominator don't "cater to any unique attributes of any phone"...making for some pretty weak apps.  Or "Cr-apps".
• Not mentioned in the article, but relevant as well, is US Venture Capitalist Firm KPCB's $100MM "iFund", a pool of cash they've set aside to invest in companies that make iPhone and iTouch applications

The complete article here: http://tinyurl.com/5ywycy

I've been gaming since the early 80's (coding on my Tandy Corp Model I, level II) and in my experience, the mobile gaming experience on communications devices has sucked for years.  Most games were either crap or bad ports or both.  There are some promising publishers (THQ?  Glu?  Jamdat - oh wait...EA mobile) out there, but no-one's created the "must-have" mobile game. 

Why?

Big name publishers have looked at mobile as a hedge/defensive move/portfolio asset - not a serious focus.  console/PC titles earn bank, not mobile.  And unfortunately, investing for the future is hard when you've got quarterly numbers to make.

Carriers cripple the process with their soup of devices and form factors, tech and non-transparent dev/QA "testing" environments.  Want a game on their system?  Dumb it down to work on the devices with broadest penetration.  Or better, create a version that works on whatever latest device they're selling.  Which by definition won't have a big audience.  Minimizing revenue.   Oh - and they like exclusive windows.  Or they won't promote it.  No promotion = bad deck placement.  You see where this goes.

Independent developers didn't have the resources or portfolios to weather this crap.  So they've been doing web stuff.  Java, Flash. Facebook Apps. 

Which brings us back to the Apple iPhone SDK release.  And Google Android OS.  And Nokia's new-look N-Gage.  Apple's advantage out of the gate is homogenous devices and an iTunes delivery system, but...Nokia is working to open up its game dev systems (SDK's and API's), and devices should begin shipping soon with Google's Android OS. 

What form will the mobile Tetris, Pong or GTA take?  TBD...