Until today, most games available for purchase on cellphones all release at fairly close to the same price. While the price level differs depending on the country and carrier, carriers generally set the price for games and attempt to offer games at an initial price of around $5 per download or $3.50 for a monthly subscription. Prices for a given title will sometimes be lowered over time, but prices have appeared to care more about the brand of the game than the fun of the game.

Industry analysts, including The Technology Suits, have long predicted that the mobile gaming market will begin to segment titles based value, complexity and features, as in the fixed game and mobile console (GBA, DS, PSP) parts of the industry. Casual games and puzzle games are fun, but most of these games are relatively easy to create, and there is significant competition for this space. For example, every carrier is constantly approached with new versions of Texas Hold’em and Tetris style games.

The mobile game titles that have done a better job of maintaining higher prices are the more advanced casual games, such as Jamdat Bowling, and known branded games often tied to fixed game titles or movie releases. As phones and networks have advanced, consumers have begun to see more advanced mobile games such as Quake Mobile (by Pulse Interactive) and the location based multiplayer game Undercover 2 (by Ydreams).

The fixed game industry has long maintained pricing segmentation between new release AAA games, older AAA game, value games and casual games, with continued healthy grown in all segments. The mobile game market will move towards its own segmentation in the future, but many companies have been unwilling to make the first move until today.

Nintendo has been the single most dominant force in mobile console gaming with its various GameBoy models and the newer DS (no offense to our Sony comrades, but you are still new to the area). However, we have heard almost nothing from the company in the mobile non-console market (e.g. cellphones).

Nintendo has corrected that and taken the first step into mobile content outside of core gaming devices by creating Nintendo Mobile. Nintendo Mobile will begin by offering sounds and graphics related to the Super Mario series and upcoming Nintendo games, but we can only hope that mobile games will soon follow.

Consumers on NTT DoCoMo will have the first access to the new offering on October 17th, with releases on KDDI on October 20th and Vodafone on November 1st. Some content will be free, but most initial content will be available for a subscription of ¥210 ($2) per month.

KT Corporation, Korea’s largest fixed-line telephone and high-speed internet provider, continues to invest in an attempt to transform itself into a multi-media industry group. KT Corp. has just acquired 51% of Sidus FNH. Sidus FNH is the largest filmmaker in South Korea. This follows an 8 billion won ($7.8 million) June investment in a 30 billion won movie investment fund established by Show Box, Korea’s second-largest movie distributor. Analysts also believe that KT is currently negotiating a contract with Walt Disney to distribute the company’s content through mobile channels.

Nam Joong-soo, KT’s newly appointed CEO, told reporters that “contents, handsets and networks will be converged, putting the focus on customers.’. He also said that the company will invest 10.4 trillion won ($10 billion) between now and 2010, with 7.8 trillion won being used to strengthen South Korea’s telecom infrastructure and 2.6 trillion being spent on new growth areas.

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Content companies and telecoms in Europe and North America need to keep a close eye on the consolidation and developments in the content and distribution within South Korea. For good or bad, South Korea’s increased combination of content and distribution will help accelerate the market by removing discussions over pieces of the value chain. This may not be the best for the overall market, but it is sure to provide a consumer test bed for consumers’ opinions on digital content and access technologies.

In continuing our recent coverage of the mobile music sector, we found a truly interesting article from MobileMentalism (MM).

MM makes some great points about how device convergence is different for the mobile phone is different for the camera than for the portable music player. In the case of digital cameras, stand-alone cameras still offer an advantage over their camera-phone counterparts at the same price. This leaves a place for both combined and stand-alone cameras in the market.

Music capable cellphones though offer almost the same functionality as stand-alone music players such as iPods and Mp3 players. While this is true, battery life is still a major concern for consumers in the phone market. The devices may have the same capabilities, but the functionalities are very different.

A new report by Reconnex suggests that the majority of companies expose vast amounts of employee personal information

Some of the high-level results include:

• 91% of companies assessed exposed employee and/or customer personal data
• 80% of companies assessed had unknown peer-to-peer file sharing protocols running, such as Kazaa, Bit Torrent, WinMX

PC Pro has compiled data from 1,085 respondents on their desires for mobile music. The first part of these results are offered in a new article.

Key findings include:

The U.S. Government is making structural changes to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements, but it is only a symbolic move. The country needs a real catalyst to spark innovation in fuel efficiency technology.

For those unfamiliar with CAFE requirements, these rules govern the minimum average fuel standards that each automotive company must meet with the vehicles it creates. While the government has made minor adjustments to the requirements for each category of vehicles, these rules are far out of sync with the original intentions.

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The time has come for our politicians to drastically increase the CAFE requirements on new vehicles. The technology is available for at least a 10% to 20% increase in current standards. A significant increase in the standards would encourage the core parts of the industry to further increase funding in engine technologies and would offer a real opportunity for new technology firms.

Realeyes3D has secured €7.5 million (USD 9.3 million) in venture capital. This round of funding was led by Atlas Venture and Partech International and had participation from first round investors Siemens Acceleration in Communications and I Source Gestion.

For those not familiar with Realeye3D, the company creates and implements technology related to camera phones. It is best known for Phone2Fun suite of products that allows users to send handwritten messages, postcards, and fax-quality scanned documents from a standard 1 Megapixel camera phone. In essence, the user takes a picture of any document (e.g. handwritten note, article, diagram) and the “scan” can then be sent directly or embedded in other documents, such as a greeting card with a handwritten note.

The German government has created a $320 million (262 million Euro) venture capital fund to support technology-based startups within the country. A European Commission website referenced the creation in pointing to the Partners for Innovation website this past week.

Industry analysts see the creation of the High-tech Startup Fund (High-Tech Gründerfonds) as an attempt to reform previous German federal venture capital programs begun several years ago.

Since its announcement, Google’s digital library initiative has polarized both consumers and copyright holders.

On first view, Google’s plan to scan books and make them available through their search engines appears to violate copyrights on these books, and many large publishers have geared for a fight with the search giant. However, at closer inspection, Google only plans to allow searching within these texts and does not plan to make full text or even large sections available to users. This, likely, falls under the terms of fair use.

InternetWeek’s Christopher Heun takes an unbiased and thorough look at the legal hurdles behind the Google Print Library Project in a new article.

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As authors ourselves, The Technology Suits strongly supports the rights of copyright holders to be compensated for their creations. We also believe in taking an unbiased view on new technologies such as the Google Print Library Project. There are obviously pluses and minuses to new technologies and their ability to make content more readily available. It is important that creators of content stay up to date with these to protect their creations, expand their audience and receive proper compensation.

Sprint Nextel announced that it will acquire two resellers of the Sprint service and bring those subscribers under the Sprint Nextel Brand. It will pay around $288 million for Gulf Coast Wireless, which has 95,000 subscribers in Louisiana and Mississippi. IWO Holdings, which has 237,000 subscribers in New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts […]

Science Applications International, based in San Diego, is the largest privately held defense contractor for scientific, engineering, systems integration and technical services to the U.S. Government and commercial markets. It has many offerings but generally focuses on security, intelligence and homeland defense.

The company also filed for a capital restructuring and will create a parent company called SAIC Inc., with its current shareholders becoming shareholders of the parent company. Given the restructuring and size of the initial offering, SAIC does not expect the IPO to finalize until 2006.

Gamers may have to wait a little longer for the Xbox 360, but it may be worth the delay. IGN has received information from three unnamed retail chains that the next-gen console will be now be available for wale on Friday, November 25th – the day after Thanksgiving and the largest shopping day in the States. Launch titles will still be available before the console, with sales starting on Monday, November 22nd.

Officially, Microsoft has told the public the Xbox 360 will be available “this fall”. Unofficially, the company has said that November would be the launch month.

This extra time will give developers additional time to finish launch titles and still release the system in time to capitalize on the “holiday rush”.

IBM recently announced the formation of a Venture Capital Advisory Council to work with IBM to encourage and aid deployment of open standards based solutions, with a focus on emerging markets. The Council “will meet throughout the year to review opportunities for startups in IBM’s partner programs”.

Initial members of the Venture Capital Advisory Council include venture capital partners at Accel Partners, Darby Overseas Investments, Ltd, Draper, Fisher and Jurvetson, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, 3i, U.S. Venture Partners, and Walden International.

Paper, magazines and blogs have been talking about the upcoming wave of WiMax and other wireless broadband services. These new technologies are fast, but analysts do not think that any of them will offset 3G.

3G is increasingly being rolled out by cellular operators in Europe and North America. It promises to deliver average data speeds of about 400K bps to 700K bps. While the WiMax Forum predicts that mobile users will receive at least 1M bps from WiMax, its coverage will be limited for the next three to four years and will merely supplement 3G offerings. It is possible that 3G, WiMax and other wireless broadband technologies will converge into a future 4G offering.