The founder of the popular photo-sharing app, now owned by
Facebook, looks less comfortable when asked whether he’ll
soon be adding advertising to his service.

“We don’t have any specific plans to share about advertising
yet, mostly because we’re focused on growing the company as
quickly as possible,” Systrom said in an interview with Reuters
TV at LeWeb technology conference in Paris.

The decision, he conceded, may no longer be his alone.

Instagram, which has 100 million users sharing pictures
taken on their mobile phones, was acquired by Facebook in April
for $1 billion in cash and stock.

With Facebook struggling to prove to investors that it can
fulfil its much-hyped growth potential and advertising on mobile
devices proving particularly tricky, pressure is likely to grow
on Systrom to monetize his creation in the near-term.

So far, Instagram is still run largely independently from
its parent company, Systrom says, but he admits the grown-up
world of focussing on the bottom-line may not be far off.

“Even from the beginning when we started Instagram, we
realized we had to build an independent business, and even
within Facebook, we realize we still have to contribute to the
business,” he says.

Some of the value Instagram brings is helping Facebook,
which has seen its share price drop about 28 percent since
listing in May, think about how its 1 billion users surf the
site while on the go from smartphones and tablets.

Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s platform partnerships director
said in an interview, that Facebook was increasingly focused on
mobile users.

“If you’re looking at kind of how we’re evolving our
product, Facebook has become a mobile-first company.”

Facebook recently announced a plan to combine user data with
Instagram, and eventually bowed to public pressure to hold a
vote on the proposed change.

Data analysis is widely used by web companies from Google to
Facebook to better target ads to users, but the practice is
contested by some on-line privacy advocates.

Details are scarce on what Facebook actually wants to do
with Instagram data, and Systrom didn’t provide much insight.

“I don’t have specifics about the data policy but what I can
say is that we are looking to make the user experience better,”
said Systrom, adding that Facebook’s data could be used to fight
spam for Instagram users.

Facebook is already facing a class-action lawsuit in
California that alleges that its Sponsored Stories feature
violated California law by publicizing users’ “likes” of certain
advertisers without paying them or giving them a way to opt out.
The case involved over 100 million potential class members.

An Austrian student group also recently said it plans to
take Facebook to court to try to get it to do more to protect
user privacy.

Systrom sought to soothe such privacy concerns saying
Instagram wasn’t setting up a scheme to sell data on its users.

“I think what people have to remember is that we always have
the best intentions in mind for everyone and data sharing is not
something that we focus on in the morning,” he said.

“When we wake up and we get to work, we’re not like, how do
we get data to go from one place to the other, we’re simply
trying to make the services better.”

Facebook, and its founder Mark Zuckerberg, however is
further along than Instagram in terms of seeking to turn its
user base into revenue largely via ad sales.

David Kirkpatrick, author of the book “The Facebook Effect”
that charts the social network’s rise, said Zuckerberg had long
known that he would have to turn his baby into a real business.

“Facebook has evolved to the point where they are willing to
accept a degree of intrusion in advertising, although right now
their mobile advertising remains too intrusive,” said
Kirkpatrick.

“But their goal is that the ads be perceived as so useful to
the moment, the situation and the person” that they are welcomed
by the recipient, he said.

“Do you want to play Atari?”

Mark Pincus is sharing an inscription from his high school yearbook with a roomful of journalists at his company Zynga’s San Francisco headquarters.

The purpose of this event, called Zynga Unleashed, is to reveal the roadmap of one of Silicon Valley’s fastest growing companies – but right now Pincus is looking back.

“I spent my youth trying to get everyone around me to play games,” he continues. “But somewhere between high school in my first job, games stopped happening. I think that video games were too complicated for the people around me and I couldn’t rationalize sitting and playing alone.”

The narrative Pincus is spinning omits a few twists and turns: the overseas stint, Harvard, the Washington years and the failed social network. He jumps right into the chip factory, five blocks down the road, where his multibillion dollar gaming company got its start five years ago.

“I set out with a small group of people to make gaming free, social and accessible. And something that would bring my friends and family back to play,” he relates, pressing a clicker that keeps the slides moving.

The next day, we are on the doorstep of Zynga’s first home.

“This building was originally the Williams Potato Chip Factory in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s,” he explains.  “I thought it was a perfect place to build a game around poker chips and microchips.”

Pincus, it must be said, is not a universally-loved individual. He likes fun and games, sure. But he was pretty intent on success too. He’s publicly admitted to doing “every horrible thing” for early revenues, including letting users download annoying toolbars.

However, Pincus & Co. also made what turned out to be a lucrative bet on people’s willingness to pay real money for virtual goods. Zynga’s first game was called Texas Hold ‘Em Poker. Pincus had a hunch that players would jump at the chance to up the stakes by buying poker chips.

“It was March 7, 2008 and like most things we did, we turned on the feature late at night,” he says from inside Zynga’s first office, now deserted.

“There was a lot of built up demand in our players to buy chips and basically to play at the much higher stake tables and before that there wasn’t any way to do that other than to spend a month or two working your way up through the lower tables to win the chips.”

His winning streak had started.

Other hits followed, including the virtual farming game Farmville, the virtual city-building game CityVille and Words With Friends, a title that was picked up by Zynga when it acquired mobile games studio Newtoy in late 2010.

Propelled by a close integration with the world’s biggest social network Facebook, Zynga has become the poster-child for how companies can create value via online networks.

The company surpassed a billion dollars in revenue in 2011, and in mid-December, Zynga listed on the Nasdaq with a value of $8.9 billion.

However, celebrations of the company’s fifth anniversary have been tempered by talk of cooling enthusiasm for its brand of gaming.

On June 12, analysts at Cowen & Co. published a report suggesting that the market for games on Facebook was in an “accelerating user tailspin” after the mobile measurement firm AppData published statistics showing daily active users of Zynga’s social games had dropped 8.2 percent in May.

The Zynga Unleashed announcements, which included a more extensive gaming platform called Zynga With Friends and new titles such as ‘The Ville’, ‘Chefville’ and ‘Farmville 2’ landed with a thud on Wall St. Zynga’s Nasdaq-listed shares fell nearly five percent on the day.

Zynga shares, which were priced at $10 for the company’s market debut on December 16 have lost nearly half of their value.

Pincus, a boyish looking 46-year-old, appears sanguine.

Now sitting on the top floor of Zynga’s more spacious new headquarters down the road, he explains “we are the biggest believers in the future of play and social gaming and I fundamentally believe that the whole world is going to play together and as they do there’s going to be the opportunity to provide the kind of valuable entertainment that we’ve seen for decades for TVs and movies.”

That said, he acknowledges that maintaining momentum in a culture addicted to change can be challenging.

“In this job, in this game, you cannot take your eyes off the ball…we need to keep reinventing social gaming and play so that it appeals to more and more people. It’s a consumer and product mission, and then it’s a business mission and if we get focused on short-term volatility in our game traffic and share price, I don’t see how that’s going to make us more successful in the future.”

Asked if he was frustrated by Wall Street’s reaction to the announcements at Zynga Unleashed, he says no.

“I’m measuring our success in two ways. One I’m measuring it anecdotally. Are we making an experience that gets through to our moms? And that gets through to people like you who don’t have time for games. So as we see that happen, I believe that we’re on our mission and I’m measuring our success by the size audience we can bring to our games,” he says, before striking a more measured note.

“There are obviously metrics that are perfectly overlapping between what Wall Street cares about and how I view the future. The daily active users of our games matters. The percentage of our users who choose to buy in game, or spend money with us matters a lot but we’re focused on growing them in the long-term and short-term.”

One factor that’s been weighing on Zynga’s stock is the company’s reliance on Facebook for the lion’s share of its revenues.

The Zynga With Friends social network has been cast by some as an effort to wean itself off the Facebook ecosystem, but Zynga also recently became the first company to start running Facebook ads on its own platform.

Rather than trying to lessen Zynga’s dependence on the world’s number one social network, Pincus explains company is “doubling down on our Facebook relationship.”

That said, he’s also keen to emphasize Zynga’s successes on mobile. At Zynga Unleashed, the company laid claim to being “the largest mobile gaming network in the world” and Pincus says it will begin to bring its games to mobile at an accelerated pace.

“We’ve grown terrifically on Facebook first and now we’re growing on these other platforms (iPhone and Android). To me it’s less about diversifying and moving away and it’s more just we want to get to the largest audience and we want to provide them the best experience,” he says.

Pincus also rejects criticism of his company’s $183 million acquisition of OMGPOP, the New York studio behind the pictionary style game Draw Something. In May, the Financial Times reported that Electronic Arts Chief Executive John Riccitiello made a reference to an unnamed competitor paying high prices for “instant one-hit wonders.”

Pincus, suddenly prickly, fires back.

“I’m not defining our success by how much CEOs of other game companies respect our decisions and in fact in the case of New Toy and in the case of OMGPOP we were the only company bidding on buying them. It wasn’t competitive. Nobody else wanted to buy New Toy but we saw something there that the rest of the industry didn’t see and I wonder now whether he thinks that was a good or bad acquisition. Words With Friends is the third-most downloaded mobile app of all time. So to go out an innovate in the market and build this industry we’re going to have to be early and take risky bets. And we’re going to have to make leading investments and we’re going to define success by the audience we build for play and for Zynga you know, not by whether a competitor likes the deals,” he says.

In the past, Pincus has trumpeted the importance of “failing fast” as a method of building successful products. So he’s flexible, but only to a point.

“The way I think about it is that your vision and your mission and your goals should never change. Your objectives should rarely change and your strategy should change as often as it needs to for you to achieve your vision and your goals,” he outlines.

Zynga’s mission was, and remains “connecting the world through games.”

In its first expansion outside the Americas, which the company has already said will push it into a loss this year, Netflix said its prices and instant access to a broad range of online entertainment would attract new customers.

Lovefilm, which has 2 million customers in its core British market, immediately announced Lovefilm Instant — an internet streaming-only offer to undercut Netflix — as an alternative to its current offer that combines streaming and DVD rental by post.

Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings told Reuters in an interview that BSkyB would be its main competition.

“Lovefilm is not the enemy. When you talk about big entertainment businesses, Sky Atlantic and Sky Movies are huge, and our advantage is we are much lower priced than the Sky packages and it is all on demand, click and watch,” he said.

Netflix is currently trying to recover from the roughest patch in its history after alienating U.S. customers with a 60 percent price hike in the third quarter in an attempt to cover the increasing costs of buying TV and film content.

Co-founded by Hastings in 1997, Netflix created the U.S. market for DVD rental by post but has suffered more recently as it shifts to lower-margin instant online delivery.

Nonetheless, Hastings said Netflix had no option but to press ahead aggressively with the new delivery technology, describing DVD postal delivery as being “a little bit like travelling by horse and buggy.”

“In the long term, Internet TV — the idea that you can click and watch anything you want — is such a powerful concept that we are investing heavily,” he said.

Hastings said Netflix had begun to regain U.S. subscribers last quarter. “What we said a quarter ago was that it was going to turn up in the back half of Q4 and everything has been consistent with that,” he said.

But he declined to say whether the company would turn profitable again during the course of 2012. “I cannot comment,” he said. “We are really focused on this global expansion and it is expensive.”

NO FRESH CAPITAL

Netflix is offering unlimited online access to tens of thousands of hours of movies and drama for 5.99 pounds ($9.20) per month in Britain and 6.99 euros ($8.90) in Ireland, plus a month’s free trial.

The new streaming-only package from Lovefilm, which said on Monday it had had a record number of subscribers signing up in the fourth quarter, will cost 4.99 pounds per month.

In the United States, cable and satellite TV providers are under pressure from streaming services such as those provided by Netflix, with many viewers giving up expensive subscriptions in favor of Internet-based content streamed to their PC or TV.

But so-called over-the-top providers like Netflix still struggle to compete with the quality of programs provided by Time Warner, CBS or Viacom. Netflix has said its U.S. content costs will almost double this year.

Hastings said, however, he did not expect to need to raise more capital this year, after raising $400 million in fresh capital in November. “No. We are doing great,” he said.

BSkyB charges 20 pounds per month for an entertainment package that includes Sky Atlantic, a U.S.-focused drama channel launched a year ago that includes exclusive rights to HBO’s back catalogue including the popular Game of Thrones.

Europe’s biggest satellite broadcaster demands that customers sign up for contracts, and have a set-top box and connection to a Sky dish. Sky Movies costs 16 pounds per month on top of the basic TV package.

Both Netflix and Lovefilm can deliver their content via a wide range of Internet-connected devices like games consoles, tablets and blu-ray players as well as computers and smart TVs.

Netflix said its personalized interface, in which viewers will be offered programs depending on their past viewing and can see what their friends like and are watching if they sign up via Facebook, could help give it an edge.

It will offer films and TV programs from such providers as the British broadcasters BBC, Channel 4 and ITV and movie studios including Disney, Viacom-owned Paramount, and Twentieth Century Fox.

Hastings said Netflix, which until now has been available in the United States, Canada and 43 South American countries, would not necessarily push into more new markets this year.

“I am not sure about this year. For now we are focused on the UK and Ireland,” he said. ($1 = 0.6490 British pounds) ($1 = 0.7865 euros)

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Sarah Young)

The Apple co-founder who inspired the Macintosh computer,
iPod, iPhone and iPad died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after a
long battle with pancreatic cancer. He stepped down as Apple
chief executive in August.

Flags outside Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California,
flew at half mast as mourners gathered on a nearby lawn, where
fans left flowers and a man played the bagpipes.

In New York City, an impromptu memorial made from fliers
featuring pictures of Jobs was erected outside a 24-hour Apple
store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, with fans snapping photos of
it on their iPhones.

“As soon as I heard the news, I came out to this Apple store
to pay my respects,” said business professor Gary Hamel. “I saw
tears in some people’s eyes.”

Grieving fans all over the world left flowers, notes and
apples with a bite taken out, just like the Apple logo –
instantly recognisable despite being one of the few top brand
logos that does not feature the company’s name.

Many said their lives had been transformed by Apple.

“I wouldn’t be able to run my business without Apple,
without its software. I run a video production company. It’s
allowed me to have my dream business,” said David Chiverton who
was leaving Apple’s flagship Regent Street store in London.

“I bought the iPod nano, in black. I wanted to buy something
to remember the day by,” Chiverton said.

At the Frankfurt Apple store in Germany, Wolfgang Kummer,
ex-managing director of font design and desktop publishing
services company Linotype, left a white rose.

“You recognise his hand in all Apple products and I expect
we will continue to see his influence,” he said, adding that
Jobs had changed the world of desktop publishing. “But
eventually it will fade.”

In Tokyo, a group of fans brought together by Twitter
gathered at sunset with candlelight apps turned on on their
iPhones and iPads.

And at China’s biggest Apple store, in Shanghai, mourner Jin
Yi expressed regret that Jobs had not lived to see even closer
links between humans and their devices.

“He created these gadgets that changed people’s perceptions
of machines. But he did not manage to witness the last step in
which, through his gadgets, people’s lives can be effectively
fused with these machines.”

Even Apple employees not allowed to give their names to the
press because of Jobs’s authoritarian style of leadership said
they were saddened.

A sombre-looking assistant at an Apple store in the northern
English city of Manchester said: “We’re carrying on doing our
jobs as usual and we’re not commenting on this. But at the end
of the day it’s our boss, and we’re all pretty cut up about it.”

At the Apple store in Sydney, lawyer George Raptis, who was
five years old when he first used a Macintosh computer, spoke
for almost everyone who has come into contact with Apple.

“He’s changed the face of computing,” he said. “There will
only ever be one Steve Jobs.”

(Additional reporting by Sarah McBride in Cupertino,
California, Liana Baker in New York, Harro Ten Wolde in
Frankfurt, Hyun Oh in Tokyo, Royston Chan in Shanghai and
Rosalba O’Brien in Manchester, England; Writing by Georgina
Prodhan; Editing by Nick Macfie and Elaine Hardcastle)

Many analysts believe that smartphone makers such as Samsung, HTC or Sony Ericsson will now embrace Google’s Android platform more deeply, fearing they can no longer compete with Nokia on Windows Phone.

But Andy Lees said the vote of confidence from Nokia, which sold 100 million smartphones last year, would encourage software developers to create applications for Windows Phone, benefiting all cell phone makers using the platform.

“Having them really betting on Windows Phone as the future of their smartphone business is a big statement in terms of the potential for volume and the total ecosystem,” Lees told Reuters Television at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona.

“If you’re a developer… would you develop to Windows Phone? Before you might have said: ‘I’m not sure, because what’s the ultimate volume going to be?,” he said.

“Well, now the largest phone maker and also a whole set of other OEMS (original equipment makers) are already betting on the platform.”

Attracting developer attention is crucial for the success of any smartphone. Apple’s iPhone was a design hit in 2007 but the App Store where users could buy small software programs to personalize their iPhones cemented its position.

“There are royalty payments for software, they’re putting search in more places, there’s joint marketing that we’re doing, so money is moving around, depending on which element of the business agreement it is,” he said.

“Absolutely, there’s money changing both ways.”

Nokia investors expressed renewed skepticism about the deal on Monday, sending the shares down almost 4 percent.

Many analysts believe that smartphone makers such as Samsung, HTC or Sony Ericsson will now embrace Google’s Android platform more deeply, fearing they can no longer compete with Nokia on Windows Phone.

But Andy Lees said the vote of confidence from Nokia, which sold 100 million smartphones last year, would encourage software developers to create applications for Windows Phone, benefiting all cell phone makers using the platform.

“Having them really betting on Windows Phone as the future of their smartphone business is a big statement in terms of the potential for volume and the total ecosystem,” Lees told Reuters Television at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona.

“If you’re a developer… would you develop to Windows Phone? Before you might have said: ‘I’m not sure, because what’s the ultimate volume going to be?,” he said.

“Well, now the largest phone maker and also a whole set of other OEMS (original equipment makers) are already betting on the platform.”

Attracting developer attention is crucial for the success of any smartphone. Apple’s iPhone was a design hit in 2007 but the App Store where users could buy small software programs to personalize their iPhones cemented its position.

“There are royalty payments for software, they’re putting search in more places, there’s joint marketing that we’re doing, so money is moving around, depending on which element of the business agreement it is,” he said.

“Absolutely, there’s money changing both ways.”

Nokia investors expressed renewed skepticism about the deal on Monday, sending the shares down almost 4 percent.

RIM has attracted attention over the past year for disputes with a number of
countries in the Gulf Arab region and most recently in India, as governments
seek to monitor its encrypted email and messaging services for security reasons.

“This is just part of the business,” Balsillie told Reuters Insider in an
interview at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona on Monday.

“Every carrier in the world is subject to their domestic laws of local
access, and you have to make sure you comply with those,” he said. “Quite
frankly, every other tech and telecom company does it around the world.”

RIM has increasingly focused on growing its business in emerging economies
as its grip on corporate customers loosens in the face of challenges from more
consumer-oriented device makers such as Apple (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

“Our performance in those markets continues to grow, and grow very, very
fast,” he said.

(Writing by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Will Waterman)

((georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com; +4420 7542 7954; Reuters Messaging
georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: MOBILE FAIR/RIM

(C) Reuters 2011. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution ofReuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expresslyprohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuterssphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group ofcompanies around the world.

RIM has attracted attention over the past year for disputes with a number of
countries in the Gulf Arab region and most recently in India, as governments
seek to monitor its encrypted email and messaging services for security reasons.

“This is just part of the business,” Balsillie told Reuters Insider in an
interview at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona on Monday.

“Every carrier in the world is subject to their domestic laws of local
access, and you have to make sure you comply with those,” he said. “Quite
frankly, every other tech and telecom company does it around the world.”

RIM has increasingly focused on growing its business in emerging economies
as its grip on corporate customers loosens in the face of challenges from more
consumer-oriented device makers such as Apple (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

“Our performance in those markets continues to grow, and grow very, very
fast,” he said.

(Writing by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Will Waterman)

((georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com; +4420 7542 7954; Reuters Messaging
georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: MOBILE FAIR/RIM

(C) Reuters 2011. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution ofReuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expresslyprohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuterssphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group ofcompanies around the world.

Many analysts believe that smartphone makers such as Samsung
(005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), HTC (2498.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) or Sony Ericsson (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)(ERICb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)
will now embrace Google’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Android platform more deeply,
fearing they can no longer compete with Nokia on Windows Phone.

But Andy Lees said the vote of confidence from Nokia, which
sold 100 million smartphones last year, would encourage software
developers to create applications for Windows Phone, benefiting
all cellphone makers using the platform.

“Having them really betting on Windows Phone as the future
of their smartphone business is a big statement in terms of the
potential for volume and the total ecosystem,” Lees told Reuters
Television at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona.

“If you’re a developer… would you develop to Windows
Phone? Before you might have said: ‘I’m not sure, because what’s
the ultimate volume going to be?,” he said.

“Well, now the largest phone maker and also a whole set of
other OEMS (original equipment makers) are already betting on
the platform.”

Attracting developer attention is crucial for the success of
any smartphone. Apple’s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) iPhone was a design hit in 2007
but the App Store where users could buy small software
programmes to personalise their iPhones cemented its position.

Asked about Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop’s Sunday
night claim that the deal with Microsoft would be worth billions
to Nokia [ID:nLDE71C0K0], Lees said the picture was complicated.

“There are royalty payments for software, they’re putting
search in more places, there’s joint marketing that we’re doing,
so money is moving around, depending on which element of the
business agreement it is,” he said.

“Absolutely, there’s money changing both ways.”

Nokia investors expressed renewed scepticism about the deal
on Monday, sending the shares down almost 4 percent.
[ID:nLDE71D0EO]

(Writing by Georgina Prodhan; editing by Sophie Walker)

((georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com; +4420 7542 7954;
Reuters Messaging
georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: MOBILE FAIR/MICROSOFT

(C) Reuters 2011. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution ofReuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expresslyprohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuterssphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group ofcompanies around the world.

* Microsoft says Nokia deal to help all Windows Phone makers

* Mobile chief says money changing hands both ways

* Nokia shares down 3.6 percent

By Matt Cowan

BARCELONA, Spain, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Microsoft’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)
deep collaboration with Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) will help rival phone
makers, not threaten them, the software giant’s president of
mobile told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

Many analysts believe that smartphone makers such as Samsung
(005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), HTC (2498.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) or Sony Ericsson (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)(ERICb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)
will now embrace Google’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Android platform more deeply,
fearing they can no longer compete with Nokia on Windows Phone.

But Andy Lees said the vote of confidence from Nokia, which
sold 100 million smartphones last year, would encourage software
developers to create applications for Windows Phone, benefiting
all cellphone makers using the platform.

“Having them really betting on Windows Phone as the future
of their smartphone business is a big statement in terms of the
potential for volume and the total ecosystem,” Lees told Reuters
Television at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona.

“If you’re a developer… would you develop to Windows
Phone? Before you might have said: ‘I’m not sure, because what’s
the ultimate volume going to be?,” he said.

“Well, now the largest phone maker and also a whole set of
other OEMS (original equipment makers) are already betting on
the platform.”

Attracting developer attention is crucial for the success of
any smartphone. Apple’s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) iPhone was a design hit in 2007
but the App Store where users could buy small software
programmes to personalise their iPhones cemented its position.

Asked about Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop’s Sunday
night claim that the deal with Microsoft would be worth billions
to Nokia [ID:nLDE71C0K0], Lees said the picture was complicated.

“There are royalty payments for software, they’re putting
search in more places, there’s joint marketing that we’re doing,
so money is moving around, depending on which element of the
business agreement it is,” he said.

“Absolutely, there’s money changing both ways.”

Nokia investors expressed renewed scepticism about the deal
on Monday, sending the shares down almost 4 percent.
[ID:nLDE71D0EO]

(Writing by Georgina Prodhan; editing by Sophie Walker)

((georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com; +4420 7542 7954;
Reuters Messaging
georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: MOBILE FAIR/MICROSOFT

LONDON, Jan 27 (Reuters Life!) – For a virtually unknown
16-year-old British ukulele player and singer, Misty Miller
already boasts an impressive international following.

“The places in the world that know my music? South America,
China and Australia,” she says with slight astonishment.

Miller knows this by looking at a “heatmap” generated by a
new online tracking tool called Buzzdeck.

Built by the London-based music distributors Artists Without
A Label (AWAL), Buzzdeck is an attempt to provide musicians and
their managers with a set of insights to help them decide where
to target their promotional efforts.

AWAL co-founder Kevin Bacon said Buzzdeck aggregates data
from websites such as YouTube, MySpace, Twitter as well as the
iTunes music store and companies that track radio plays to
present a coherent view of where an artist is gaining traction.
Blogs and peer-to-peer networks are also monitored.

“We’re currently tracking about 70 or 80 data feeds from
probably 20 to 25 different sources,” says Bacon sitting in an
office of London’s RAK studios.

The digital distribution arm of AWAL released Miller’s
four-song “Remember” album in the summer with very little
fanfare.

“I had the fear the sales would be in the single units per
day or at best in the tens and twenties,” says Bacon. “What
happened was on day one we did about 200, and day two we did
200. We went on and I think we’ve just hit 6,000 downloads. It
wasn’t just ‘Whoopee, great!’ I was able to look into that and
learn from it.”

Online interest in Miller’s music spiked after her song
“Remember” was used in a campaign for the British luxury fashion
retailer Burberry.

“The number one aspect is figuring out where her audiences
are growing and how to introduce her to those audiences more
intimately through touring or through media appearances,”
Miller’s manager Anthony Gordon said.

Miller is now readying her first full-length album for
release on February 13 through the iTunes music store.

Bacon says demographic data gleaned by Buzzdeck suggests
Miller has a diverse following who are responding to her music
rather than the marketing.

“When we look at YouTube we get that there’s a substantial
amount of young girls watching her and a fairly high percentage
of older blokes,” he laughs.