NYT’s flagship app lit the blue touch paper for iPad, Wired also got in on the act early, both Denmark’s Information paper and Penguin Books have imagined themselves on the tablet, even The Economist is getting excited.

Now Holland’s De Telegraaf newspaper has published a concept video, showing how it’s thinking of approaching the gadget…

Another Dutch publisher, Sanoma Magazines, says publishers have been having “secretive” talks with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) about supporting iPad’s roll-out.

But, for all the iPad concepts we’ve seen lately, many are still only that. De Telegraaf’s video is a corporate montage designed to depict a forward-thinking multi-platform publisher, but it doesn’t exist.

In fact, it only renders Telegraaf.nl’s existing website on the gadget - and, as Apple watchers will know, Telegraaf’s Flash news videos seen in the clip won’t even work on the iPad.

Via Emerce.nl.

Springer-owned tabloid Bild’s “Shake the Bild Girl” app allows iPhone users to undress a model. Each time the user shakes the phone, the girl strips an item of her clothing. While Bild features naked women daily in its pages, Apple ruled that the girls in its iPhone app should wear bikinis.

The Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) asked FIPP last week to approach Apple over the issue. FIPP is debating the issue, but has no further comment at the moment.

The VDZ chief executive, Wolfgang Fuerstner, has warned that Apple’s move might represent a move towards censorship. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel he said: “Publishers can’t sell their soul just to get a few lousy pennies from Apple.” Bild Digital CEO Donata Hopfen agreed: “Today they censor nipples, tomorrow editorial content.”

Apple asks publishers of general interest apps to respect its US “no nipples” policy. In November, German weekly Stern’s app was dropped from the App Store due to an erotic photo gallery.

When Apple approached Bild in January, the publisher censored the PDF version of the paper programmed for the iPhone.

According to Doepfner, Springer is Apple’s second biggest client worldwide after Google (NSDQ: GOOG). And Springer makes good money via Apple. The “Shake the Bild Girl” app costs €1.59 a month and can be topped up with a PDF of the printed Bild for €3.99 a month. Springer’s head of public affairs, Christoph Keese, said that the iPhone apps launched Bild and its other newspaper Die Welt have sold a total of more than 100,000 units.

Apple’s intervention has made it clear to publishers that they find themselves in a new role in a digital world.

When Apple announced at the end of Feburary that it would “remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store”, publishers had to follow that request. It is Apple that has final control over its platform, not the publishers.

Lazar marks one of many recent departures from Yahoo’s mobile group. Over the past year-or-so, departures range from all the way at the top, like Marco Boerries, Yahoo’s EVP of the Connected Life Division, to its Chief Scientist Marc Davis to Steve Boom, SVP of Connected Life. And, only ten months after being promoted to global head of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Mobile, David Ko gained the additional responsibility for all of Yahoo’s content sites in North America.

Yahoo continues to operate its mobile search technology on its own despite the company’s search partnership with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). However, Yahoo has the ability to tap Microsoft for mobile if it decides that makes sense in the future.

In a letter sent to friends and colleagues, Lazar says he does not know what he will do next, but is taking time off and is considering moving back to the U.S. Lazar credits Yahoo for accomplishing a lot while he was there: “We didn’t have much of a business when I joined, but we now have over 100 mobile search and ad deals around the globe with the genesis of those beginning right here in the UK. Between those and the distribution deals with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and the OEMs we really created an exciting leadership position for the company.”

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In January 2009, THQ conducted a significant restructuring that included focusing on building games for smartphone platforms, closing its San Diego, UK and Germany offices, and designating Universomo as the center of its wireless business. However, today, a THQ spokesperson confirmed to ME that the Finland office is in liquidation, and that going forward, it will tap into a global network of external developers to make mobile-game titles.

The news was first reported by Pelaaja, a Finnish games magazine. The spokesperson said they still plan to release 15 mobile games this year despite the closure. “We are very excited about digital gaming and have increased our investment in this area.”

Last month, when THQ released its fourth-quarter earnings, it said it was realigning several of its studios to emphasize its digital operations. It said two of its eight studios will now focus on developing digital titles based on “THQ’s core game brands and new original intellectual properties,” as well as “the implementation of a portfolio-wide community platform to connect consumers to all of THQ’s core games.”

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Your eyes deceive you, sadly. What looks like an Information.dk iPad application was actually the front page of yesterday’s printed edition, whose cover story, was devoted to examining which digital paths might lead news economics out of its gloomy uncertainty.

While the piece itself ran the numbers of Danish media decline and an accompanying piece heard Liberal party calls for for state handouts to be widened from print publishers alone, the mock-up allows us to imagine how first-wave publishers might approach the iPad…

Information.dk’s fake app holds to a principle I forecast recently - that iPad apps will look a lot like their print forebears - but pares down front-page stories and ads to one apiece. That’s unlike the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) app, which will load its front page with stories; another move that’s not unlike its printed counterpart.

Via Innovations In Newspapers and TUAW

The investigation was ordered by SpinVox’s board in July, when, after paidContent:UK lifted the lid the company’s financial troubles and heard such claims from staff, a dossier of complaints was handed to the board by shareholders, advisers and suppliers.

The SpinVox accounts released by Nuance are brutal; they are a sea of red ink, showing little inclination to protect the managers of the company it acquired in December. Amongst other things, they reveal the conclusion on CEO’s unaccounted expenses: “The company did not adequately capture all necessary information to administer PAYE properly and to identify expenses that were personal to the CEO.”

That meant it failed to pay UK tax properly on “benefits in kind for employees including the CEO, benefits and expenditure that could fall to be treated as personal for the CEO and incorrect application of taxation to bonuses for the CEO”. Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs fined SpinVox, but fines could keep coming, the documents warn. The company was without a full-time CFO for 15 months while this went on—filling that gap might have helped make the accounts more transparent.

The documents concede that: “Bonuses were satisfied partly by the company meeting the cost of various personal expenses of Ms Domecq. Employment taxes withholding PAYE was not deducted on bonuses declared. The effect of these matters was to create a current account between the company and Ms Domceq.” The company even owed Domecq £72,000 at one point.

—Transfer of company funds: (1) SpinVox had paid £96,032 in 2008 to Ojala Ltd, “a company owned by a trust of which Ms Domceq is a discretionary beneficiary, in respect of its purchase and sale of shares in the company”. (2) SpinVox also paid up £38,400 in rent for a property used by Domecq, under an Ojala rental agreement, between February and January 2009.  (3) SpinVox had paid a total £153,000 for translation services to Celtic Communications, a company of which Domecq and co-founder Daniel Doulton were former directors.

As well as paying back £125,000, Domecq also agreed to “revise certain of her employment terms” after the investigation, the documents state.

—Staff’s stock-for-salary was worthless: Much of this started to go public when we reported that staff were being offered share options in place of salary while SpinVox weathered financial woes in July and August 2009; the offer was accepted by most. But those options were useless: “During the nine months ended 30 September 2009, the company granted 104,000 stock options to employees of the company. The 2009 stock option grants were valued using a Black-Scholes option valuation model and determined to have an insignificant value”.

Indeed, by the time the owners of SpinVox’s massive debts were paid off in Nuance’s acquisition, there was literally nothing left for employees.

—Company defaulted on loans: Management admitted in September that they failed to comply with loan covenants.

—Massive losses: January-to-September losses hit £56.4 million - a quarter higher than the year before.

—Nuance got a bargain: Although the acquisition price was $102.5 million, after debt repayments, Nuance only paid a “nominal consideration” for SpinVox. But it now plans to “rationalise and reduce” combined SpinVox-Nuance staff.

While the launch is limited to one phone, the deal is significant for SurfKitchen as it tries to help the carriers compete with app stores from other handset makers and providers. SurfKitchen’s CTO Dave Evans told mocoNews: “It’s pretty exciting and indicative of the overall ecosystem. We are seeing carriers be much more aggressive with what they do with app shops, as a way to differentiate themselves from OEMs. We are focusing how we support that.”

Last year, SurfKitchen decided to refocus its efforts more on application services as Apple’s iPhone took off. One such deployment was with the UK’s Orange, which wanted to create an application store to compete with Nokia’s Ovi, Google’s Android and other channels. The Orange store runs on a wide variety of phones, including Java, Android, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and BlackBerry.

Evans said while carriers find it important to invest in these services, the economic downturn over the past year hasn’t helped. Also, carriers are feeling pressured to invest heavily in network infrastructure, leaving less cash for other projects.

Still, he believes SurfKitchen is prospering. The privately held company has 55 employees and is profitable on a quarter-by-quarter basis. It has not raised capital since 2004, and has no immediate plans to do so. Contrast that with one of its U.S.-based competitors, Motricity, which is trying to raise $250 million in a public offering. Evans: “There’s a lot of opportunity. This will be a $13 billion marketplace in 2012. We continue as a viable concern, but I think we’ll see the number of players consolidating and potentially some will disappear over the next few months.”

The office will be headed by Pooj Preena, Hi-media USA CEO, who previously helped Skype enter the U.S. market. As the micropayments industry has heated up recently, the company will compete directly against startups, such as Boku and Zong, and hopes to help merchants sell mainly virtual goods using various payment options, including mobile phones, gift cards, pre-paid cards and home-phone billing.  Preena told mocoNews: “We’ve been doing this for eight to nine years. We started with selling content, before social gaming took off—it’s only been in the last 18 to 24 months where there’s been a substantial shift into digital and to content again.”

The company said some of the initial customers in the U.S. include Artix Entertainment, Boomerang Networks, Gambit, gWallet, Merscom Games, OLX, Peanut Labs, Quepasa, Sometrics, Sonico, TheBroth, Viwawa, Viximo, and Wadja. The platform is called Allopass.

Preena said there’s a couple of benefits of its platform, most of which come from being a well-established company. He said they can cut merchants a check every ten days, rather than other competitors that may take a month or two. The other major advantage is that it offers more than mobile payments. In the U.S., Hi-media said it can offer mobile billing from the major U.S. operators, and also billing via 900-numbers and prepaid cards.

Preena said Hi-media has about 500 employees worldwide, and of that, 140 are in the payments business. “We have fairly aggressive growth plans in the U.S., Latin America and other parts of the world.” Right now, there’s six U.S. employees, which are backed up by a technical group in Europe. It also has customer service reps in three time zones that speak 11 languages. Prior to Hi-media’s expansion to the U.S. its mobile billing platform Allopass sales were up 10 percent in the third quarter 2009 to €21.3 million.

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In the first report released today, preliminary results found that 16 million people in the UK accessed the Internet from their mobile phones in December and viewed a total of 6.7 billion pages. The sites that received the most unique visitors include Facebook, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and carrier portals including Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), Orange and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD). The data was based on information from three carriers, by January they expect to include data from four operators, and all five should be up and running in the second quarter. Release.

The two leading the charge, ComScore and the GSMA, are clear in saying the user data is “anonymized” to maintain the subscribers’ privacy. In a release, Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the Board of the GSMA, said: “The underlying principle of Mobile Media Metrics is to deliver valuable and actionable reporting tools to the media industry, while respecting the privacy of individuals. Access to transparent measurement is essential in establishing mobile as a legitimate advertising medium, and Mobile Media Metrics is a critical element in advancing this process.”

Earlier this month, a similar report was released in the U.S. by a Seattle-based startup called Ground Truth. It operates a little different from comScore and the GSMA. It has not revealed which carriers it is working, and has also chosen to get data from infrastructure companies. But the goal is the same: to get real information rather than to rely on customer surveys, analyst estimates, or other third-party reports. In a sample size of 2.5 million unique U.S. mobile web users, they viewed nearly 1 billion page views and downloaded 27.8 trillion bytes of data.

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Amazon’s mobile music service - which comes pre-loaded on the new Nexus handset, and appears with the latest, 2.1 upgrade of the Android platform - could position Android devices to compete better with the many other mobile devices bundled with music download services in the UK.

Existing mobile download services run the gamut from newer services like those from 7digital/BlackBerry, to Nokia’s Comes With Music service, operator-branded music stores such as Vodafone’s and, of course, Apple’s iPhone. The store has some 9 million tracks in stock, with prices ranging from 29p to 89p for single tracks.

But as Ronan de Renesse, a senior mobile media analyst with Screen Digest, points out in The Telegraph, the impact might be tempered by the fact that Amazon is not the number-one MP3 destination online. “If the roles were reversed, and Amazon was the market leader, things would be more interesting. As it is, I think this is important for the Android platform, but Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) will not be that worried.”

Meanwhile, the self-publishing service for the Kindle will allow publishers and authors to directly upload their books into the Amazon Kindle store. This will expand the library of non-US content, but according to TechWatch, authors will only get 35 percent of the cover price of each item. According to the release from Amazon, the company plans to extend the DTP service to more languages in the future.

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Telefonica says that it will offer Jajah’s services to “customers wishing to extend their communication experience”—beginning in Europe, where the carrier operates under the name O2. It will keep the Jajah brand. Jajah, which claims 25 million customers, is the latest VOIP provider to be bought up; last month Google purchased Gizmo5 for a reported $30 million. Here’s the release.

The company still aims to save SEK10 billion (£860 million) by the middle of next year from 5,000 other job cuts, as FT.com reports.

It’s a signal of intent from CFO Hans Vestberg, who was appointed CEO and president in the summer and takes over from Carl-Henric Svanberg in January.

The reasons behind the cuts are the same we’ve seen across the mobile sector: fewer people are needed to make the latest gadgets and to improve network connectivity. Ericsson is shutting a factory that makes base stations for 3G mobile networks and decided other sites can carry out the work. Similarly, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) cut 330 R&D jobs in Scandinavia as the company moves to less staff-intensive research and production regime.

However, internationally Ericsson is still growing and took on 8,500 staff in the U.S. in Q3 as part of the acquisition of Nortel Networks and an outsourcing deal with Sprint.

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The disparity is somewhat in contrast to what HTC America’s VP of sales and marketing Jason Mackenzie told mocoNews in October. He said ideally the company’s handset portfolio will be split about 50-50 between the two operating systems. “No one is more committed to 6.5 than HTC, and no one is more committed to Android,” he said. In fact, the Taiwanese handset-maker shipped four Android phones before anyone else had shipped one, and has announced at least five Windows Mobile phones that will ship by year-end.

That statement could still be true if the leaked documents are incorrect, or are focused on Europe, and are not international. The documents were scanned from a prototype brochure that was obtained during a presentation in Vienna on October 2009 and then posted in a developer forum.

The leaked devices fall into four categories: Design/Lifestyle; Social; Performance; and Productivity. The Windows Mobile 6.5 devices are named: Tera, Trophy and Photon and the Android devices are named Legend, Salsa, Bravo, Tide and Buzz. AndroidAndMe.com does a good job of highlighting the attributes of the Android devices and more info can be found at the developer forum here.

If these leaked screenshots do indeed provide a look at HTC’s line-up for the first six months of next year, and they are European-focused, it’s interesting that many of them are Android—especially given a report released today that concludes that consumers are showing little interest toward them in Western Europe, reports Reuters. Research firm IDC said market share of smartphones running Android rose to 5.4 percent from 4.2 percent in July-September in Western Europe. “Consumers steer clear of Google’s OS and sell-out is below everyone’s expectations. Consumers recognize the Google brand, but still do not understand what Android is,” IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said in a statement.

Perhaps more devices from HTC will help with awareness. Jeronimo said few devices were partly to blame for less-than-stellar results, but that could change with more handsets coming from LG (SEO: 066570), Samsung, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) and Motorola.

The company raised $3.5 million (£2.1 million) in January last year.

The company gives publishers access to 33 ad networks through its SOMA network aggregation platform—in theory cutting down on the leg-work communicating with them all separately—while networks get access to 1,000+ publishers

The company, founded in 2005, covers 215 countries and claims to serve almost three billion ad request per month. Its plan now is to expand further globally, having recently opened a Singapore office. Release.

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Engadget is reporting that the restructuring is much greater than just the headquarters moving. Sony Ericsson will also be shutting down small offices in Seattle and San Diego. Its research and development division will also be transitioning from North Carolina to Redwood Shores, Calif.

AP reports that the joint venture employed about 420 people at Research Triangle Park headquarters, but it’s unclear how many employees will move to Atlanta. The restructuring is part of a much larger company goal of cutting its world-wide staff of 10,000 by 20 percent. In Q3, Sony Ericsson sold 13.4 million phones worldwide and achieved a marketshare of only 4.3. In the year ago period, Sony Ericsson sold nearly twice as many devices and achieved a marketshare of 8.1 percent, according to Gartner.

Most of the issues revolve around how much the ringtones cost and whether those prices or subscriptions were easily found or explained on the web site. The EU said in a release it was able to resolve issues with 210 of the websites. Of those, 159 websites have been corrected and 54 websites have gone out of business.The EU said it will continue to work on the remaining 91 cases with other actions planned in 2009 and 2010. The investigation kicked off in June 2008 and 27 Member States, Norway and Iceland participated. As part of the investigation, the EU said today that the Italian authorities imposed fines of 2 million Euro ($3 million) on nine companies that were in breach of the law. Those companies included: Telecom Italia, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Wind, Dada, Zed, H3G and Zeng, Fox Mobile and Tutto gratis.

The EU found that over half of these websites targeted children. In a release, EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said: “This EU wide investigation was a direct response to hundreds of complaints coming in from parents and consumers from many different EU countries. Young people should not have to fall victim to scams like misleading advertising that lure them into ringtone subscriptions they thought were free. And parents should not find nasty surprises in their phone bill, when their children by accident have signed up to more than they have bargained for.”

Of the offending web sites, there were three main problems:

—41 percent had incomplete information about price, and often times was not referred to at all - until the consumer received their phone bill. In addition, the word subscription was not clearly mentioned, even though users were signing up for a recurring payment.
—75 percent of the websites lacked contact information, which is against EU law.
—35 percent of websites were misleading, and often times advertised services for free even though consumers were charged.

Under the terms of its search and advertising partnership with Microsoft, Yahoo will use Bing as its exclusive search platform for PC-based searches. However, the mobile search relationship has been left up in the air, with Yahoo allowed to choose other partners if it wants to. Lazar says that nothing had been decided, adding that the relationship between the two companies is still “in the early stages.”

Yahoo has had an alliance with O2 parent Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) since 2007 but it notably did not include Telefonica’s operations in either Germany or its home base of Spain. Lazar says the company hopes to “announce some things (there) in the near future.” Terms of the O2 Germany deal were not announced, although Yahoo says it is “multi-year.”

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In Germany, two carriers—Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and O2—have picked up the device, as well as mobile phone retailer The Phone House. No word on when it will go on sale, or which carriers in Argentina and Italy are selling the phone.

Motorola did not disclose where else the Milestone might launch, but the news that European carriers are picking up the device is another sign that the still-struggling handset maker could be making its way back.

In the company’s Q3 earnings call, co-CEO Sanjay Jha had said that at least for the first half of 2010 the phone maker’s focus was on the United States, China and Latin America. Europe, Jha, implied, was a trickier market.

He noted that European carriers had their own services and own operating systems, and typically, to ensure a device got “hero status” meant accommodating them. Plus he added, the company would also have to make an “additional brand investment” into the market, something that would depend on the type of commitment it got from carriers.

The Milestone has similar specs to the Droid, aside from a few tweaks. The device supports HSPA, instead of EV-DO Rev A and also comes with Motorola’s own navigation application Motonav, instead of Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps’ version.

As Orange UK CEO Tom Alexander promised earlier, the carrier has sidestepped a price war.

Orange has announced monthly price plans for the phone that are nearly identical to O2’s, save a few pence difference. The phone will also be offered on pay as you go deals, with the iPhone 3GS 32GB version costing £539 ($883). Full pricing details below:

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