AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ), Vodaphone (VOD), and Telefonica of Spain -- what do these Tier 1 mobile operators have in common? They're all rolling out, or will introduce, the Synchronoss Technologies (SNCR) personal cloud platform in calendar year 2013. Operators are seeing a churn rate that is anywhere from 25 to 50 basis points lower when their subscribers are connected to the Synchronoss personal cloud. With millions of mobile subscribers and counting, that adds up to a lot of money.

Here is a synopsis of some of the progress Synchronoss is making to back up and store consumer digital files with their partnerships in telecom:

• They have successfully launched their personal cloud platform at Verizon, and are now focused on adding devices, additional data classes, and functionality over the course of the year. This is being rolled out under the name Verizon Cloud.
• They continue to pick up momentum at

It was only a year ago that Glu Mobile (GLUU) tripled in a matter of months going from $1.80 to $5.90 a share. Those days are long gone. After a few mediocre quarters, the stock hovers at roughly $3, and my impression from reading the 2013 Q1 conference call transcript, is that the stock will be stuck in neutral until the second half of the year. However, if Glu's price/action the last few days is any indicator, it may quite well be a market laggard.

The company is experiencing a transitional period in the handheld gaming sector. Gamers are migrating from a Player vs. Environment universe (where you play video games by yourself), to the Player vs. Player arena. This is what is referred to in the industry as Social Gaming 2.0. Glu Mobile is betting heavily that their established brand and high production values in Player vs. Environment

"Call 'em like you see 'em and to hell with it." - Ernest Hemingway

Big profits have been racked up since the early November elections. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 are up about 12%-13%, with most of the gains coming since January 1st. The Dow has been the biggest beneficiary, rallying 10% since we rang in the New Year, and the S&P is not far behind at 9%. Both are at, or nearing all time highs. We could continue to experience a market melt-up, but from my vantage point, markets don't continue to run without frequent corrections. Five months without a break is a substantial run.

As we approach Q2 earnings season, I'm betting that some up and coming organizations will miss guidance with the weakness in Europe. If the stars align correctly, I may be able to find some bargains, and limit my downside risk by

Growth stock. Growth industry. Booming stock market. Those should all add up to nice profits in your portfolio, but they don't if you own shares of Velti (VELT). Velti's share price continues to crater, even with the Dow at all-time highs. Earlier this week, the day after a horrific Q4 conference call, I liquidated my position for $2.30 a share, took a loss, and am moving on. Easy enough if you're an individual investor, but I'm in the blogosphere, so I have to publicly eat some crow.

With all of Velti's potential, leading market-moving advantage in mobile advertising, 10-year operating history, and what was a discounted valuation by Wall Street, I really thought I had a winner with this one. However, Velti reported a Q4 adjusted loss of $0.39 a share when analysts expected a profit of $0.59 a share. On the revenue side it took in $97.5 million,

Ruckus Wireless (RKUS) went public at $15/share on November 15th last year, only to drop 18% to $12.25 when the closing bell rang that very same day. That was then. Earlier this week, it crossed the tape at $26.50 after a dizzying ride to the upside, only to come crashing down to $19 at the market close on Friday. The equity sold off because of some cautionary comments by CEO Selina Lo during Tuesday's Q4 conference call.

There is a lot of impulse buying when IPO's hit the tape, and Ruckus Wireless is no exception. Investors get an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a company with disruptive technology, and the stock usually runs. With the stock at $26.50, and a forward P/E Ratio of 147, Ruckus just got ahead of itself. The security is currently in correction mode.

It should be noted that in mid

Synchronoss Technologies (SNCR) entered 2013 as the worldwide leader in "personal cloud," a Tier 1 carrier based initiative. If you live in the United States, you are being inundated with television commercials for mobile shared data plans from both AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ). These mobile shared data plans are what is now touted as the personal cloud. According to the most recent Credit Suisse report on Synchronoss, these mobile shared data plans "enable cross-platform data synchronization among devices that are specifically designed to not interoperate."

Many domestic smartphone users may understand the personal cloud concept if they own an Apple (AAPL) device. A majority of smartphone and tablet users in the Apple ecosystem are familiar with iCloud, the service that stores all of your mobile device data on servers in cyberspace. The problem with this storage service is that it has its limits. You

During the past year, Glu Mobile's (GLUU) shares rose to almost $6 on much fanfare from the investing community and a loyal base of rabid fans. Their fall from grace began with an overall market sell-off, then investors were blindsided in 2012 Q3 when the company was T-boned by a faster-than-expected industry migration to social mobile gaming.

Player vs. environment (playing against the machine), was in vogue for years because that is what the limits of the technology allowed. That's been supplanted by player vs. player, or Social Gaming 2.0. Because of this migration, the company delayed a majority of Q4 launches until Q2 2013 to make them multi-player ready. Shares got crushed. Glu has languished in the $2 range for three months, and if market conditions worsen, shares may go lower.

Glu's on a mission to take their established position as one of the premier mobile gaming companies, to

Synchronoss Technologies (SNCR) does a lot of the heavy lifting for your mobile devices, but remains anonymous. They have long been "the company behind the company" where it comes to smartphone and tablet synchronization. Although they will achieve significant growth with their current offerings because of the proliferation of handheld computers domestically, they are looking for a bigger piece of the action.

Last week, Synchronoss officially entered a border war with Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Google (GOOG) with their purchase of NewBay from Research In Motion (RIMM) for a discounted $55.5 million. RIM initially bought NewBay for $100 Million a little over a year ago to buttress international cloud services for their Blackberry mobile phones, but the company has since fallen on hard times.

It was a straightforward business proposition, and showed good horse sense for Synchronoss to pay cold cash for a company that is more

Some descriptions in this post were paraphrased from the most recent Immersion Corporation 10-K.

On December 17th, Seeking Alpha's Market Currents posted a note that IBM's (IBM) R&D Laboratory expects haptic technology to play a big role in our digital devices within the next five years. Haptic technologies allow people to use their sense of touch more fully when operating a digital device. Video game players may be familiar with the technology when they feel a gun recoil, an engine rev, or the crack of a bat meeting a ball.

Small cap Immersion Corporation (IMMR) is big in the sector. Because of my preference for investing in mobile pure plays, Immersion's 1,200 patents, and their position as kingpin in force feedback, the remainder of this article will focus on the small company.

Whether you call it haptic, force feedback, touch feedback, or tactile feedback, the technology is here

On December 6th, Nuance Communications (NUAN) held their Analyst/Investor Day Presentation, and shed a lot of light on their prolific catalogue of products for 2013 and beyond. Artificial intelligence. Voice biometrics. Collaborative filtering. Speech recognition. Predictive models. Tech-savvy terminology like this is peppered throughout the transcript. Although Nuance has established a beachhead in voice recognition technologies, CEO Paul Ricci and his cohorts believe there is a paradigm shift currently underway. This was the crux of the presentation.

Just like investing, speech recognition is less than a perfect science. It's a complex and multidimensional business. Nuance is arguably the top company in the sector. If we peel back the layers to examine the behind-the-scenes processing of Apple's (AAPL) voice generated Siri platform, you'll find Nuance Communications at work. It's undetermined whether iPhone aficionados have completely bought into the technology, but in increments, the science is improving with the advent of

Like just about everybody else these days, investors tend to live in the moment. This is probably due to the 24/7 Twitter world we live in, but if you take a step back, you may be less inclined to suffer from investing myopia. Case in point: Velti (VELT).

After reporting Q3 financial results, the security sold off considerably because although Velti met revenue expectations, they were six cents short on earnings. This equates to a loss of three cents a share as opposed to earning three cents. Many large companies beat on earnings, and come up short on sales. For small companies, it's just the opposite. Despite that fact, Velti got crushed, down about 35% to $4.50 the day after the presentation. In addition, the equity has sunk approximately 60% from $10 since the major indexes started correcting in mid September.

According the Q3 conference call transcript, Velti

A lot has happened to Synchronoss Technologies (SNCR) since my previous article. Most notably, Hurricane Sandy. According to the November 5th conference call transcript, not only did they adjust their view for next quarter, Q4, but they are not giving guidance for 2013 for the time being. This is because major clients like AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) are allocating resources to the clean-up, and restoration of power in the Northeast United States. This is priority one, and well should be.

As altruistic as the majority of us are, we are still dealing with Wall Street, and the projected price of equities. Synchronoss is no exception, and took a hit even after they reported a very good Q3. The security was trading near $23 thirty days ago, but has since slammed on the brakes, and now crosses the tape at $18. Although it provides an important service to

If you opened up a time capsule going back to my last article on Fusion-io (FIO), you might surmise that not too much happened regarding share price. After all, the stock currently crosses the tape at roughly $25, and that's where it stood three months ago after announcing a killer quarter (it was its last quarter in fiscal year 2012). That may make sense since revenues were up only 11% sequentially in Its most recent report with a lot of expectations for the security.

However, the stock was not stagnant. Just the opposite. It was in perpetual motion. Because of a showstopper Q4, and top notch technology, the Wall Street press has treated this company like royalty. The result was a moving target that topped the charts at $32, only to come back down to what I continue to believe is an inflated level at $25. Although I

Don't kid yourself. Glu Mobile's (GLUU) lowered Q4 guidance is very bad news for the company in the short term, and may weigh heavily on the stock price for a few quarters. This is because Glu and the majority of mobile gaming organizations launch most of their titles near the end of the year. It's the holiday effect. All that Christmas and Hanukkah money for a certain male demographic goes to buying new smartphones, and the gaming apps that go with them.

Although the dice are running cold for Glu, and the stock has sold off to historical proportions ($5.90 52 week high to roughly a 52 week low of $2.50 where it currently trades), I am still long the stock. They remain a growth company in the growth sector of mobile content creation. Smartphones and tablets aren't going away soon, and Glu still remains one of the only

The death knell for Acme Packet (APKT) appears to be a bit premature as Wall Street boosted the stock price since its Q3 Conference Call on October 25th. The equity has been punished this year from anemic worldwide enterprise sales and weak North American Tier 1 carrier spending, which pressured the top and bottom lines. However, the company seems to be well positioned to take advantage of three major growth drivers for its business: enterprise, interconnect, and wireless.

Although it has maintained its global leadership position in SBC's (session border controllers), Acme Packet may have gained the upper hand by recently introducing the Net-Net 6300. Net-Net 6300 is a plug-and-play quad core CPU and memory module that supports one million subscribers and is capable of handling 200,000 calls at a time. Practically all interconnects among Tier 1 carriers use decades old legacy technology. The Net-Net 6300 is

Apple's (AAPL) App Store now hosts 700,000 apps with 250,000 dedicated to the iPad. On Google's (GOOG) Android Marketplace, it's 530,000 mobile apps and counting. Most pundits agree that there have been one billion smartphones sold since the launch of the iPhone, and that figure is expected to swell to between four and six billion by 2016 depending on who your source is. Throw in the proliferation of tablets, and you've got an ever expanding universe of mobile applications. The mobile app market is projected to reach 25 billion dollars by 2015.

One company many investors are getting familiar with in mobile content creation is Glu Mobile (GLUU). It's gotten quite a bit of coverage on Seeking Alpha, as well as on CNBC with endorsements on their Fast Money program by John Najerian, and influential tech analyst Dan Niles during regular broadcast hours. Glu Mobile trades

It's no secret we're experiencing a seachange in personal computing as people migrate from PC's to tablets and smartphones. By no means is the personal computer dead, but growth has diminished to a trickle, and that's being generous. Technology bellwethers Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) have experienced tremendous pricing pressure on their shares as a result.

The question remains, where do you want to invest to take advantage of the proliferation of handheld devices? The most obvious answer is either Apple (AAPL), or, Google (GOOG) with the iOS and Android operating systems. However, they are large cap equities, and although their runs may not be over, they have become very large organizations where market capitalization is concerned.

My preference is to take advantage of the smaller content providers, the companies that supply the applications for the new wave. Enter Glu Mobile (GLUU), one of the

Acme Packet (APKT) is the undefeated world champion in session border controllers (SBC) which act as traffic lights for the Internet's backbone. If you're not a computer scientist or an electrical engineer, investing in the technology sector can be a confusing endeavor; not only for retail investors but for experienced buy side analysts, as well. I've been writing about Acme Packet for a year and a half now with the help of research reports, conference call transcripts and on-line trade journals, but still, some questions about their technology remain unanswered.

Most specifically, two relationships they have with Broadsoft (BSFT) and privately held Aicent are a bit cloudy to me. I took the opportunity to contact the company, and they were very helpful in filling in the blanks. Julia Dunlea (in media relations) coordinated this effort, and Kevin Mitchell, Acme Packet's Solutions Marketing Director fielded all of my inquiries. Before I

It's been fairly well documented that the Facebook (FB) IPO opened to much fanfare with praise such as "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," "history in the making," and "it will make you money hand over fist." The masterminds on Wall Street priced it at $38, only to see it be cut in half a few months later to $19. I picked up a small piece of the action today for inclusion in my portfolio. This was not a spur-of-the moment decision.

Granted, the stock is in need of divine intervention to stop the slide, especially after the media firestorm of late. Out of all the bear articles I have read, Henry Blodget's piece was probably the most informative and well balanced. Both Blodget and ValueLine cautioned that until Nov. 14, more lock-up restrictions will expire with approximately 1.5 billion shares flooding the market. Things turned from bad to worse when board member

According to a recent presentation sponsored by Barclays Capital, Ceva (CEVA) is the world's leading licensor of DSP (digital signal processing) cores and platforms with a 90% market share. DSP essentially helps translate analog signals to digital and vice versa. Two other main engines in a cell phone are the CPU, brought to you by a company like ARM Holdings (ARMH), and the GPU for graphics processing, in which Nvidia (NVDA) excels.

The overarching theme of my writings and stock selections since Jan. 1 has been the wireless broadband sector -- anything to do with smartphones and tablets. My impression is that this a market worth cultivating and, in the next two to three years, may grant me a bigger paycheck. I'm primarily in small caps like CEVA to take advantage of the potential growth in a sector that is the driving force behind much of the technology expansion.