Archive for the ‘Mobility’ Category

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Concepts and Technologies behind Real-time Demand Data – A Consumer, Mobile and Business Perspective

Friday, October 9th, 2009

A continuation of one of my favorite research topics, the mobile context and the meaning of interactions, below is my latest as presented at the 2009 Demand Analytics conference — this time with focus on real-time demand data, the consumer and businesses. The audience was mainly category and brand managers for big consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies.

Concepts And Technologies Behind Real-Time Demand Data – A Consumer and Business Perspective
View more documents from C. Enrique Ortiz.

See the related presentation Mobility and People’s Context, Interactions and Data, which was originally presented at Design4Mobile 2008.

ceo

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On hardware vs. software-based handset differentiation

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Is mobile handset differentiation based on hardware coming to an end?

Back in 2007 I wrote a piece on my blog titled: The future of handset design: from hardware to software. And today this is getting more real (and validated) than ever.

When it comes to mobile handsets the rate of innovation introduced via hardware (HW) vs. sofware (SW) is and will be mainly on the SW side.

Differentiation, especially on common platforms (such as Android), will be primarily driven by SW, this is: Innovation on UIs and interface paradigms (on Android we can see this with the introduction of Moto Blur and HTC Sense), better applications (developer ecosystem adding lots of application that in turn adds to the usefulness of the handset), and better services (some phones will be very good at social things, while others at music, and so on). At the end it is SW what makes the handset more dynamic and useful and different.

Today is a great time for those doing R&D in the areas of Human-Computer Interactions (HCI).

Differentiation is necessary. But typically differentiation drives fragmentation. So the follow-up big question is on the fragmentation introduced by the different UI paradigms. Will applications need to be adapted to each new paradigm (i.e. as in many versions?). Yes, very likely.

Developers writing SW for the iPhone only have one paradigm to worry about. On the Android though, as expected we are seeing different UI paradigms (with related APIs) but fortunately the rest of the platform should remain consistent across manufacturers so fragmentation is hopefully localized to the UI only. For mobile Java (beyond Android) fragmentation is yet to be solved. For mobile web and widgets, the same although I am seeing a lot of noise around the JIL Widget SDK.

Fragmentation across platforms will continue. Fragmentation within a single platform shall be localized to the user interface (or the user interactions). Allowing for the UI to be redefined/reconfigured allows for incredible innovation on human to machine interactions which basically redefines the perception for a given handset. The next best thing is re-configurable software and hardware, but for that you will have to go play with platforms such as Bug Labs (which BTW is an extremely cool platform).

ceo

(Images sources: PopSci, Nokia, HTC Phones, Benzinga)

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Posted in Mobility | 2 Comments »

Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley 2009 – October 15-16

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Mike Rowehl and Gregory Gorman are putting together the 4th Annual Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley on October 15-16, 2009:

Day One:

  • Business Day: Oct 15, 2009, 08:30am – 07:30pm
  • Grand Hyatt San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

Day Two:

  • Developer Day: Oct 16, 2009, 8:30 – 5:30pm
  • Microsoft Conference Center, Mountain View, CA, USA

MOBILE 2.0 Silicon Valley 2009 is a two-day event on October 15th (Business Day) and October 16th (Developer Day) 2009, focusing on Mobile Applications and Services, Mobile Ecosystems, and Disruptive Mobile Innovation, as well as providing a deep dive into technology platforms from a Developer’s perspective.

Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley is all about giving our audience the opportunity to learn, network and voice their views. Our Event does not talk at you — you are the Mobile Community and we strive to create an atmosphere that challenges your business assumptions and provides you with hands-on understanding of mobile platforms.

Also see About Mobile 2.0.

Discount for MobileMonday Members

MondayMonday members can receive a discount of $70.00 on the business day registration fee and a discount of $20.00 on the Developer Day. Please contact us at info@mobile2event.com for the discount codes.

ceo

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On App Stores (Guest Post by Kiran Mudiam)

Monday, September 21st, 2009
This week guest post is by Dr. Kiran Mudiam, a long time mobile technologist and a researcher.

Here is my take after reading all the letters sent to the FCC.

We all know that there are positives and negatives to open and closed App Stores. And not everyone is happy with both models. For example, too open, such as the Android platform, we find lots of spam and light-p0rn. On the other side, too close, we have the Apple police, which results of lots of missing apps.

I have seen Google Voice and Google Latitude on the Android platform, and I believe that they need to be similary implemented on the iPhone as well; many, including myself, would want that on their iPhones. And to make it clean, Latitude should be integrated into the current iPhone maps app just like it is done on the Android, and it also makes sense to try to get it running in the background.

I am still hopeful and waiting to see these apps on the iPhone as they fit nicely; but that will only happen as long as they play nice with Apple. If not I would argue that Google can find another app store such as Cydia to release their apps if they want stick to their guns. I already have seen the availbility of the Gooble Voice App through Cydia.

About Dr. Kiran Mudiam

Kiran

Dr. Kiran Mudiam is a long time mobile technologist and a researcher with several years of experience creating mobile software products and end-to-end mobile computing. He recently was a Mobile Architect at American Express – Technology Strategy and Innovations, driving the next generation Mobile Payments for American Express. He is currently at Trimble Outdoors working on their next generation of GPS based mobile applications.

twitter: @kiranmudiam

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Mobile Application Stores Conference at CTIA 2009

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Ajit and team have been organizing The Mobile Application Stores, Strategy and Deployment conference to happen during CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment on October 8th 2009, in San Diego. Featured speakers for the event include:

  • William Volk, CEO, PlayScreen
  • Chetan Sharma, CEO, Chetan Sharma Consulting
  • Tim Haysom, Chief Marketing Officer,OMTP
  • George Linardos Vice President, Product Management, Media, Nokia
  • Ilja Laurs Founder & CEO, GetJar.
  • Dr. Jin-Sung Choi Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Head MC Global Product Planning Team, LG Electronics Korea

And many others. App Stores is a hot topic worth understanding as it is at the center of application discovery and monetization. For more information visit Ajit’s blog…

Related to this topic see my writeup: The Google App Market – An Analysis.

ceo

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Posted in Mobility | 1 Comment »

SIM Card Overview

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

I put together a SIM Card Overview. It provides quick introduction to SIM Cards, standards, some industry numbers, Java Card, and the Smartcard Web Server, and links to Gemalto tools.

SIM Card Overview
View more documents from C. Enrique Ortiz.

ceo

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The Google App Market – An Analysis

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

I’ve written a quick analysis on the Google App Market situation… Looking forward to your feedback/opinions!

You can download this article in PDF format. Download The Google App Market – An Analysis (PDF).

The Google App Market – An Analysis

September 6, 2009 | © 2009 C. Enrique Ortiz — http://CEnriqueOrtiz.com

This article is about App Stores/Markets. It is a personal view on the Google App Market and thus it is totally unscientific. It focuses on Google App Market but it applies to all app stores. In this article “App Market” and “App Store” are used interchangeably and refer to the application catalog on the Web that allows for the discovery, payment and download of mobile applications.

There are like four ten thousand applications on the Android Market while the iPhone App Store has many, MANY times that. Everyone knows that the Google App Market is not doing as great as the iPhone App Store. Even when trying to compare oranges-to-oranges, this is, for example, the number of apps and apps-downloaded and paid-for on a given/same period of time or the same age-period of the store themselves, for some reason the iPhone has clearly done a much better job.

It is a very interesting problem. There are so many variables involved in this problem, starting with the human-factor variable, that makes this nut so hard to crack. Bring on the human-factors experts! Bring the designers and engineers. And let’s not forget the marketers! This problem is way beyond pure engineering — I’ve always said that the iPhone was created by designers and marketers and engineers, while the Android was made by engineers.

Why such big differences between both stores?

  • Are iPhone users really unique/different?
  • Are Android apps “sucky” or are Android users cheap?
  • Are the reported store/market numbers skewed?
  • Does it have to do with “critical mass”?
  • Or is it all due to user-experience — the experience finding, buying and downloading applications?

Perhaps it is all the above. But before I take a stab to the above questions, let me talk about a higher-level view to this problem. To be successful, App store/markets must be built on top of a number of foundation steps as illustrated next.

Figure 1 – Basic Ladder for App Market/Store Success

…where:

  • At the bottom of the ladder as first step is critical mass, as without critical mass there is insufficient effect to realize a long-tail effect. Handset positioning, marketing, pricing, region, all have part on critical mass adoption.
  • The next step up the ladder is user-experience, which perhaps is one of the most difficult steps to get right and is covered in more detailed later in this article.
  • The top step on our ladder is the ecosystem and quality applications as without these there is no app store/markets.

The above foundation steps are critical to the success of app stores/markets. Next let me go back to the questions above and how they relate to this Basic Ladder.

iPhone users have proven to be a unique/different bunch. They are more consumer-oriented than Android and even BlackBerry users. For some reason those users do get applications. Perhaps thanks to marketers (TV commercials | “There is an app for that”) iPhone users see applications as “things that solves specific problems”. The iPhone has critical mass, but BlackBerry has critical mass as well; the BlackBerry store should be a great tester of the theories written in this article (once they implement the two top steps of the Basic Ladder above). Yes, critical mass is one of the foundations for success. As a side-note, while the iPhone has an attractive critical mass, it is not as attractive in all countries due to cultural preferences/differences. Device manufacturers must understand and find what creates critical mass for their own products on specific regions.

Today Android apps are less sophisticated when compared to iPhone applications. On the iPhone it is expected that applications are somewhat sexy/eye-candy. This helps with application quality perception. Applications must just work well and be useful. Good quality apps is another foundation for success. In theory and over time, Android apps should become sexier as well. Should there be an approval process that enforces a minimum user-experience and eye-candy for Andorid apps? Hmm that is a tough one, and doing so go against the idea of a true open platform.

Android users are cheap; Android users don’t buy as many applications as iPhone users do! Maybe this has to do with demographics. Based on observation the majority of Android users are the techies-type who prefer free stuff and who are not willing to pay for applications that aren’t great. But the demographics for Android users will soon shift with the plethora of devices coming from emerging markets and other. (For the record, I’m an Android user)

While we always have to be careful when interpreting industry metrics, as collected numbers, by definition, are and alway be *relative* to a particular set of conditions and data set, existing metrics/numbers do show that there is not enough critical mass (a foundation for success) for Android at this moment. I expect numbers to shift in favor for Android as mentioned above. And the top reason I believe this will be the case is economics — more and more device manufacturers will introduce Android devices because using Android reduces their initial investment and maintenance costs (due to reduced Build of Materials) when introducing a new mobile handset. As you know software and especially Operating System software is a very complex piece and it is very expensive to build and maintain and it is just logical that manufactureres will take advantage of all the research and development already done by Google and that is available for “free” or “at no cost” to them.

And what about the user experience? The user experience, another foundation for success, can definitely be improved on the Android Market. The current experience is not terrible, but it is not helping maximize the transactional opportunity. Towards this goal of improving the user experience Google has been working on a new version (v1.6) of the App Market application which includes a number of improvements including screenshots and more descriptions and new categories — see Some News from Android Market (Google Android Developers Blog) including a short video of the new client.

While I’ve no insight (beyond the above) on what Google will be improving on the Android Market, they must take into consideration a number of additional things, including improving the user experience beyond the on-device client and helping the Search function a bit more.

On User-Experience

User-experience can enhance and promote usage, or discourage it. If the (app store/market) is too hard to use, or if it is too hard to find apps, then people won’t use it. And as the number of applications increases, better ways to find applications must exist.

Recently AdMob reported (PDF – AdMob Metrics July ‘09) that over 90% of users in their study reported that most of the application discovery efforts are done on-device instead of their computers. Below are other insights from the AdMob report:

  • The most-cited ways of discovering apps are browsing the Android Market/App Store Rankings and searching for a specific type of app. Over 90% of users who cite these activities do them on their mobile device instead of their computer.
  • Android, iPhone and iPod touch users are all highly engaged with apps. Android and iPhone users download 9-10 new apps per month, while iPod touch users download 18. Over half of Android and iPhone users spend more than 30 minutes per day using apps.
  • iPhone and iPod touch users are more likely to regularly purchase paid apps than Android users. 19% of Android users download at least 1 paid app per month, compared to 50% of iPhone users and 40% of iPod touch users. However, of those users who regularly purchase paid apps, downloading behavior is similar across platforms.
  • Requests from the Android Operating System increased 53% month over month. Android has 7% worldwide OS share.

The above goes back to better ways to discover, buy and download applications is key. I do believe though, that a web-based companion will also improve overall Google App Market performance.

Search is good, but even Search needs some help. And this help is about filters, good filters. Imagine the right filters, including self-organizing ones. With the proper Search and Filters we have the first step towards improving the app store user experience. The other two steps are related to buying and download.

While search by categories, “featured apps” and popularity is important, quickly filtering by “free vs. paid” and “new vs. old” is probably even more so. And to maximize the usefulness of the filters and maximize the transacttional opportunity (minimize incorrect bias) the filters must all be visible and accessible just “one click away”. Let’s take a stab at a potential UI design for such an application discovery application:

Figure 2 – Potential Enhanced UI Design for App Store Client

Note the emphasis on filters by categories; here categories aren’t fixed and will adjust based on historical usage, or preferences. This is important as my favorite categories not necessarily are your favorite ones, and once categories are fixed it translates to exclusion; indiscriminate exclusion is not a good thing. Note the “free vs. paid” and the “new vs. old apps”; the latter should be familiar to Google Reader users. Other useful filters are the ones found on the iPhone App Store client such as “featured” and “Top 25″. But again, it is very important that search and filters are ALL visible and also are “one click away”.

A complete discovery solution must not only be on-device but must have a desktop companion. Apple has iTunes. Google has the Android Market, but it is incomplete in my opinion. See the areas in red below: few filters, incomplete applications catalog, and no push-to-handset method, just to mention the obvious limitations.

(Part of the discovery — the App Market/Store shall also only show the applications that works on the user’s device — here works means resolutions, platform version compatibility and other).

Figure 3 – Current Android Market is Unnecessarily Limited

The enhanced web-based “desktop” market (companion to the on-device market client) shall provide the complete catalog of applications, provide and maintain download and purchase histories, but also must allow for the ability to initiate the download (push) of the application to the handset over-the-air (OTA). In other words, a user should be able to use their browser on their desktop/laptop and go to the Android Market, discover, buy and push applications to their Android handset. This market user interface shall provide all the same search functionality/filters as the on-device discovery UI illustrated above.

Once The App is Discover, what is Next?

Once the application has been found, it is about learning more about the application: here things like screenshots, ratings, descriptions are all important. And the upcoming version of Google App Market client v1.6 will try to improve on all of those areas. What about the ability to share the application? Yes, very important! Google must add such facility (i.e. “Tell a Friend”) as well.

The following illustrates the App Market/Store Cycle and Support Triangle that shows the three main phases a user goes through when interacting with an App store/market including some important characteristics for App Market/Store success.

Figure 4 – App Market/Store Cycle and Support Triangle

You should be able to extrapolate from the above app discovery, payment and downloads diagram and about the transitions in between them.

Last I would like to mention the importance for a super simple payment system. In the past I’ve written about “integrated payment with the operator” approach which should be a very simple approach for users (this of course would only apply to operator-subscribers scenario). Another solution to this is the App Market/Store PC (web) companion that I mentioned above that would allow a user to not only discover and buy applications, maintain existing download and purchase histories, but also easily setup and maintain account and payment histories; for Google this would be Google Checkout in the back-end.

In Conclusion

App Stores are little strange, difficult entities. At this moment it seems that Apple has gotten it right, but not the others yet (others are RIM, Google, Palm, Microsoft). App Market/Store success is dependent on a number of different moving parts, including the most difficult one of all: human-factors. It takes designers, engineers, marketers and human-factor experts to get it right. And it is important to get it right, as the future of the mobile handset useful relies on software and applications, and software and applications are the bread and butter of the developer community, you and me — the Ecosystem.

ceo

V1.5 | September 6, 2009 | © 2009 C. Enrique Ortiz — http://CEnriqueOrtiz.com

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Startups in mobile: Join the PICNIC 2009 Mobile Bites!

Friday, September 4th, 2009

My buddy Rudy De Waele (m-trends.org, dotOpen, Mobile 2.0 guru) sent me an email about the upcoming PICNIC 2009 event in Amsterdam.

PICNIC is a very cool event and Rudy (dotOpen) is organizing the mobile bits of the event. So any startups that would like to demo at the PICNIC event need to apply as explained below (deadline is Sept 10):

Startups in mobile: join the PICNIC Mobile Bites!

On Thursday September 24, PICNIC Amsterdam 2009 and dotopen organise a short but sweet PICNIC Mobile Bites:

Five of the most interesting, creative, touching, weird or exciting applications in mobile will be showcased to the PICNIC audience in mini-presentations lasting 3 minutes each.

Do you have a really cool mobile application that you would like to demo or pitch during PICNIC ‘09? Then this might be your chance! Apply through dotopen at dotopen.com/PICNIC to participate, before September 10 midnight CET. *

PICNIC is Amsterdam’s leading annual international event, highlighting creativity and innovation, particularly in media, entertainment and technology. PICNIC brings together and disseminates the ideas & knowledge of the world’s best creators & innovators. PICNIC ‘09 will take place from 23 to 25 September 2009 in a unique location, the Westergasfabriek, a former gasworks fabric.

dotopen is a social platform for decision makers to connect & collaborate. dotopen is open to any organization interested in developing its ecosystem in order to advance its business and innovation.

About PICNIC:

ceo

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Resolving Device Fragmentation Issues – Mobile Web and Local Apps (and Google)

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

The Problem: Too many handsets, environments, and differences across platforms

The Solution: A single environment/platform for mobile apps

There you go, problem solved, no more fragmentation!

Google at MobileBeat 2009

Now that the “noise” level has dropped, it is my turn to comment on Google’s (Mr. Vic Gundotra) comment at MobileBeat2009 about mobile apps and the future:

“What we clearly see happening is a move to incredibly powerful browsers,” Gundotra said. “Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning. We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing.” Gundotra added that Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed “Build for the web” with the initial launch of the iPhone, a statement that met with resistance from developers: “I think Steve really did understand that, over the long term, it would be the web, and I think that’s how things will play out.”

Here Mr. Gundotra (Mr. G hereafter) emphasizes and reminds us that the main root problem with mobile applications is fragmentation and the consequences are higher cost of development and management of such mobile applications.

OK, fragmentation has slowed down mobile, and has resulted on higher development and management costs. But fragmentation will not go away any time soon. He said the Web has won, but on mobile it hasn’t. Because many applications can be delivered over mobile is not the same as it has won. The Web has won though from the perspective of “Services on the Web”. Mobile web run-time environments will, over time, continue to evolve, providing a rich development environment; I believe this will be the case, but this will take time, years, to happen. Now imagine a world where we have Google browsers and run-times and APIs — that would mean no fragmentation, right? Well, even with run-times from Google with its own APIs, yet another level of fragmentation will be introduced.

It is the way it is.

And not everyone will use Google tools and run-times and APIs. And not all developers want to develop their apps using Web technologies and models. And, mobile web apps are not sufficiently rich and transparent yet to replace local apps.

In any case, I will admit that I share Mr G’s vision on web run-times, as I’ve written many times before here in the weblog, but his message was so overloaded that I’m not really sure if that was Google’s official stand or just Mr. Gundotra’s point of view. For one, today Google is a large corporation, and I won’t be surprised if his comments caused some internal frenzy. You see, his view/solution to the issue of device fragmentation is “one platform”. But, that is exactly the goal of the Android team; reduce the number of mobile platforms out there.

Mr. G also implied that Google will continue to invest (greatly) on their (mobile) web platform with the goal of bringing it at the same level to local (non-web) platforms such as Android. This should translate to extending the browser/web run-times with the APIs and access to device functionality and HW that provides overall greater richness. That translates to investments in Chrome “OS” and the Google APIs including Gears, which are proprietary APIs. As a side-note, why Google didn’t participate on BONDI, which defined APIs for web run-times for application invocation, UI, location, camera and other, might reveal either “political” or proprietary mentality that should concern you (as it concerns me). BONDI and Gears are competing technologies, but they don’t have to be.

But all this push to web run-times and Chrome “OS” doesn’t mean that Google will stop investing on other. You see, Chrome “OS” will become a very strong brand. But Chrome “OS” is a misnomer, as it is not a real OS. And to be able to expose and offer the powerful browsers and rich user interfaces and experiences that the browser-based apps of the future will need, again, access to the functionality and HW underneath is needed – and for this a real underlying OS will exist and perhaps with it an application environment on top of that; in short OS = Linux, App environment = Android. In other words, Google’s investment on Linux and Android won’t go away. With this approach, Google has all the components, from the OS, to the app environment, the web-run-times and the applications to lead and keep it moving ahead, red-shifting from the competition.

App Stores are Dead, Not

Some folks have interpreted Mr. G’s comment as the end of App Stores; see Google forecasts browsers will beat out app stores (FierceMobileContent). But it is not; not sure why that conclusion. App Stores are nothing else than repository/catalog of applications, those being local or web or widget or whatever, for the purpose of discovery regardless of the application model. Thus, expect Google App Store to grow in the future to include widgets, web-based and other apps.

Mr. Jobs, Apple, The View of the Future, But Reality Strikes

Mr. G assumes Steve Jobs “saw the future” when at first the iPhone development was web-based only. Maybe he is right. But the iPhone had an SDK, perhaps primitive, since day one (used for the development of internal apps such as phone dialer, contacts, calendar, and so on). Why would Apple limit access to it? One reason could have been that the SDK was not ready for prime time. But Jobs is a coined operated individual, let’s not forget that. Maybe Mr. Jobs wanted to give access of the SDK (which allows for extremely rich and profitable applications such as games and music and video) to just a few privileged ones — the big power houses such as Sony and others, while the rest of applications by the developer community were to be done via simple Web (perhaps for free). Who knows. But that hypothetical plan didn’t work, and once Apple recognized the real power of the *developer community*, it reacted and offered the SDK; in the end, everyone won, you and me. And the unplanned succeeded. And this same exercise also showed the reality that today mobile web apps are not ready for prime time as compared to the richness and capabilities of local/native apps. There you have it. Native apps are kind today. :-)

Today vs. Future

Let’s not confuse theory and practice. Let’s not forget why we are doing this. Today is about generating revenue while minimizing cost of development. Tomorrow is about the same, but lets learn and reduce such costs related to investment and operations, and part of this plan is reducing device and application fragmentation. This is important for Goggle as it is about applications and information (and the infrastructure that powers this). Google has two strategies on applications and fragmentation: one Web-based and one local/on-device (Android). Google has the whole SW stack including the OS. And on the top, it is about the information (and its meaning) w.r.t users/people. But it is IMHO that local apps are here to stay; because limiting apps to browser-based apps will be too limiting, in functionality and richness and in programming models and at times in speed. And because it is about the developer community (internal and external), “limiting” will translate to less innovation. And I will even predict that even Chrome OS will allow the user to “switch” to an advanced mode, the native/local apps mode (or a hack will exist for it).

And Mr. Gundotra’s comments are all about the future… So time will tell. And it should not be a too distant future (5 < years)...

ceo

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MobileBeat2009 and Congrats to Ringful (Michael Yuan)!

Thursday, July 16th, 2009


Today is MobileBeat2009. And congrats to my friend Michael Yuan, who was Mobility Researcher and Lead Developer at eZee Inc. (my previous start-up) and who was invited to present his new start-up company Ringful at the MobileBeat2009 event — see 14 finalists picked for MobileBeat2009 Top Startup Competition.

Our apps finalists include two that have previously talked about some plans: Waze and Ringful.
:
Ringful creates a dashboard on the iPhone for accessing personal health information. But these companies, too, will have new announcements at MobileBeat.

Below is a diagram of Ringful’s Healthcare Services for the iPhone that he will be presenting:

Congrats Michael!

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Call for Submissions – VentureBeat Announces the “It’s the application, stupid!” Competition For Outstanding Mobile Apps

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

VentureBeat Mobile Trophy

VentureBeat is looking to recognize Mobile innovation at the second annual MobileBeat Top Startup Competition.

Last year the awards went to firms such as AdMob and Loopt. This year the competition shifts to mobile applications and services, with 50 finalists to be determined and a final 14 to present live at MobileBeat on Thursday July 16th.

Top Startup Submission Rules:

  • Startups must complete and submit a form by June 30, 2009 for consideration
  • Fifty finalists will be announced on July 2nd on Venturebeat.com. Voting will then be open to the public to select the top seven companies per sector.
  • Seven finalists from each category will present for five minutes each to the MobileBeat audience determined by judges as to avoid any vote manufacturing.
  • Nominees must be younger than three years old. Special consideration will be given to companies that are launching for the first time.

Winners to be announced at the MobileBeat Conference July 16th, San Francisco CA San Francisco.

Directly following each two-minute presentation, a panel of judges will provide feedback in rapid fire. After final deliberation in the afternoon, winners will be announced.

Submitting a company for nomination is completely free. For more information visit the startup competition website.

MobileBeat 09 will take place on July 16, 2009 in the Parc 55 Hotel in downtown San Francisco. The theme of this year’s show is “It’s the application, stupid!”, focusing on mobile applications’ recent explosion in popularity.

See registration information.

Speakers at this year’s MobileBeat include: Dr. Tero Ojanperä (Nokia), Russ McGuire (Sprint Nextel), Matt Murphy (Kleiner Perkins iFund), Rick Segal (Blackberry Partners), Nagraj Kashyap (Qualcomm Ventures), Aditya Khurjekar(Verizon), and Michael Rayfield (Nvidia)

ceo

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What is new in MIDP 3.0 – a quick summary

Monday, June 1st, 2009

As some of you may already know, MIDP 3.0 is going public. While smartphones have taken their own route with respect to the runtime environment, I expect feature phones to adopt MIDP 3.0; to be seen is the adoption by device manufacturers. But that said, FYI, the list of new features is very good (and many of my wishes were satisfied); to mention a few:

  • Backgrounds MIDlets (i.e. services) and auto-launched MIDlets
  • Enhanced storage management w/ support for record tagging/labels and support for external, secure storage
  • Access to unique device IDs such as UUIDs and IMEI (to better manage deployment instances)
  • New UI functionality such as support for splash, idle screen and screenisavers, text input into Canvas elements, tables, tabbed panes, splash screen, scalable images and animated GIF, menus and form layouts, other
  • Support for libraries — now you can decouple common infrastructure components from the app and into libraries that can be shared across apps
  • MIDlet concurrency and inter-MIDlet communication
  • Support for application and system eventing (from the system events such as low-battery, etc)
  • HTTP support for PUT and DELETE in support for REST-like web services
  • IPv6 URLs, file selectors, and other
  • Migration path to CDC
  • A number of clarifications that I hope helps reduce ambiguities that previously permitted inconsistent implementations
  • …and other

Related to this see JSR 271: Mobile Information Device Profile 3 – Proposed Final Draft.

ceo

Disclaimer: I was a member of the expert group that defined MIDP 3.0, so I am obviously a bit biased to see this succeed and at the same time very pleased with the set of features that made it to the next generation of the Mobile Information Device Profile (Java ME).

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Top 5 smartphones and MNOs – Q1 2009 (USA)

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Via @hametner, a couple of handset and Mobile Network Operators (MNO) metrics of interest (USA).

Top 5 U.S. smartphones sold in Q1 2009

  1. BlackBerry Curve
  2. Apple iPhone 3G
  3. BlackBerry Storm
  4. BlackBerry Pearl
  5. T-Mobile G1

Note that 3 out of 5 are BlackBerry handsets, and that 4 out of 5 are Java handsets! RIM seems to own over 50% of the *consumer* space in the US; i.e these numbers do not include enterprise sales. As @hametner ponders, “does this mean that Apple needs to expand beyond exclusivity to have a broader cross carrier offering?”… Yes,interesting…

Top 5 US MNOs by number of subscribers at the end of Q1 2009

  1. Verizon — 86.7M subs
  2. AT&T — 78.2M subs
  3. Sprint — 48.1M subs
  4. T-Mobile — 33.2M subs
  5. US Cellular — 6.2M

Verizon continues to be ahead, and with Verizon committing to LTE that means a very large LTE deployment supposedly starting in 2009, and with rumors that Apple and Verizon have been talking that would be a great opportunity for Apple and its “Pinky and the Brain” world dominance expansion plans for the iPhone!

Other MNOs, at&t and T-Mobile are all either committed or still evaluating LTE with eyes towards 2011, with Sprint pretty much committed to WiMAX (at this point).

Sources:

Disclaimer: I’m a Pinky and the Brain fan!

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On Mobile Applications, Platforms and Monetization — “Show me the Money”

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

I’ve been keeping track of a very interesting thread at Forum Oxford (FOROX) on the topic of Android phone dissapointing developers (w.r.t. iPhone), with Jason Delport, Alex Kerr, William Volk (who started the thread) and others adding their different perspectives on the matter. All these guys are mobile experts so what they say resonate with me…

I like Jason’s responses as there is no bias, just pure pragmatism (i.e. he has been burned before); he makes a living building mobile apps, so for him it is about business and making money. Period. Jason’s take on why Android is dropping the ball is as follows:

  1. User’s don’t want to sign up to Google checkout
  2. There are plenty of places to find illegal copies of paid Android apps
  3. The store is over cluttered with crap apps
  4. The store has a poor design and has a rubbish user experience compared to the iPhone app store
  5. Paid apps were launched later than free apps and a tone was set in the market that apps were, and should be, free.

For which I respond as follows:

On #1, Google should do one of two: 1) require and capture credit card information the first time a user tries to buy a premium application, or 2) integrate with the network operator’s billing. On #2, true, but #1 is the main issue. On #3 and #4, I totally agree, plus, the good apps are hard to find! A better way to find applications is needed. On #5, I totally agree as well; the wrong expectations were initially set.

Alex followed writing that developers should be focusing on the platforms that are most “useful” to as many people as possible in the world… these being J2ME, Web and S60.

But useful is *very* relative. For talking on the phone? For writing applications? For deploying and making money from? I used to think as Alex… yes, it all sounds reasonable — target the platforms that (in theory) have the largest subscriber reach. Well, that is, until you take into consideration “Show me the money”, as Ajit likes to say.

From the “show me the money” perspective “rich development platforms and ecosystems” have proven, finally, successful. When I say “rich development platforms and ecosystems”, ecosystems go beyond app repositories, and it is about all the details that make it work, which includes user experience, integrated billing/payment, social and not, feedback system, and all the goodies a good/properly designed app store is all about.

I remember the debates between Ajit and myself over Web vs. local apps a couple of years ago, including at JavaOne Motorola Keynote, where I defended local applications while Ajit debated that “AJAX will replace both J2ME and XHTML as the preferred platform for mobile applications development” (note that he wrote J2ME but he really meant local apps). Today I can humbly say that I was right about local apps, and that “AJAX will not replace local apps as the platform of choice for developing mobile applications”. At least not yet. Ajit was/is right that mobile web apps will be huge, but they will in a different way as when it comes to richness and user experience and making money, today it is about a local apps.

And it took Apple to show “us” the way.

App Stores have proven central for developers (i.e. “show me the money”), and for subscribers (to easily find and download apps). And as a consequence, have proven beneficial to network providers themselves – gosh, it has taken so many years for network operators to finally open their eyes, not be so paranoid and over-controlling, and agree with common sense — it is an ecosystem after all. So now, all are converging into similar solutions such as iPhone’s App Store. They have to – the power is shifting to the subscriber itself, and to the developers who are bringing applications, software to the market. And those platforms that don’t play nice with the ecosystem, will fail.

So the argument that subscribers would not download local apps, argument a number of us didn’t agree with and defended against over the years via our blogs and apps, resulted in a non-issue. Yes, users will download rich, useful applications, and even better, will pay for them if given ways to easily find, pay for, and download those applications. While other types of apps such as Web and SMS, well, subscribers do like, but for free! Don’t you agree? What this translates to is into business models centered on the subscriber vs. “the other side of the subscriber” such as businesses, etc.

A word on the various platform

A word on iPhone: the device, the platforms rocks. I have an Android (personal) and an iPhone (work). And the iPhone is a beautifully designed piece, overall, from hardware to software. AT&T will hurt and cry if/when iPhone goes to other operators. As a sidenote, see ReadWriteWeb article by Sarah Perez titled The State of the Smartphone: iPhone is Way, Way Ahead, where she explores a recent report by Flurry that concludes that the iPhone is way ahead when it comes to mobile apps (based on the number of developers, apps and consumers). But, let’s take this report “with a grain of salt”. Why? Because it can be biased as follows: the majority of the developers using their analytics instrumentation code might just be iPhone developers, thus, the sample-set is biased by default.

A word on Android: just give it time. Android has the potential to be everywhere – phones, internet appliances, cars, etc. around the Globe, and thus many different types of developers (mobile to embedded). And it very well might allow developers to enter “emerging” markets easier. Judging Android after 6 months or so means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Time will tell (but I stand by what I’ve been saying thought).

A word on BlackBerry. They are getting it, but imposing a minimum app price of $2.99 — because “they value the efforts of developers” is bogus and is an attempt to sound developer-friendly. Let the market decide pricing!

A word on Nokia: they are trying with Ovi, but keep it simple! I really hope Nokia hits the ball out of the park –but they should consider simplifying their portfolio tho, see On Nokia’s App Store Strategy. Nokia’s attempt to do integrated billing for their App Store and (eventually) requiring Credit Cards mean they are thinking the right way.

A word on J2ME: Java ME suffered over the years due to 1) the process that created it was too slow to adapt, allowing for inconsistent implementations and incomplete API-sets, 2) its security model, and 3) lack of integrated app repository (i.e. app store). I still believe it has potential to be the platform of choice for mid-level phones. Specially with the latest MSA API-stacks and MIDP3 that (I hope) will come out later this year. And today,if you have the right market and channels, go for it.

A word on Web: best channel for apps that easily bring “generic” content out to people. Huge potential, especially with efforts such as BONDI and HTML 5 persistent data and the Canvas elements. In any case it is always a good idea, if it is applicable, to have a mobile web version of your app.

A word on short messaging (regardless of SMS or Twits): best channel for notification-like distribution. Second to none. True SMS is way to expensive and prohibitive for many; SMS though is a cash-cow for network providers who must be terrified of Twitter. If targeting notification-like app such as promotions SMS and Twitter is the way to go.

A word on voice apps: I wish we spend more time investing/researching this mode of interaction.

A word on SIM-based apps: The SIM card will always be at the center of mobile apps – directly or indirectly. New technologies such as JavaCard 3.0 and Smartcard Web Servers (SCWS) have the potential of bringing a new breed of mobile applications. Still developing SIM-card based applications is a niche and very network provider oriented, but if you have the relationship w/ the carrier, go for it!

And what the best type of application is? The hybrid app! This is a rich *local* app that is very good at consuming and rendering web content, as well as direct messages (i.e. SMS, Tweets). In the future, mobile web has tremendous potential but again, it is about making money *today*.

So in conclusion, we have to agree that today, integrated app stores that caters subscribers directly is the best channel for subscribers, and developers, and for operators as well. The potential for reaching more subscribers via J2ME, S60, and Web do exist, but but one thing is to create and attempt to deploy apps for those platforms, and the other is those apps getting payed for, downloaded and used.

As a recent report by IDC (Scott Ellison) titled “Developer Strategies for Success Shift as Apple iPhone Apps Store Passes 1 Billion Downloads” concluded:

Apple has demonstrated — again and again — that the success factors in mobile can change in the blink
of an eye — indeed in as little as 3 quarters in the case of the Apps store. The Apps store is increasingly
central not only to Apple, but to any developer or company seeking to play in the mobile applications and
content space. And understanding the shifting success factors within the Apps store is key to success
both on the device and in the digital marketplace that continues to remake mobile.

ceo

P.S. Anders Borg (Abiro Mobile News) has written an excellent analysis of this blog piece — see The state and future of mobile applications. And I like very much Michael Yuan’s comment saying “What developers want is to address the “maximum number of people who are willing to pay”; exactly!

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MikeR on iPhone devotion, developers and apathy

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

A great writeup by Mike Rowehl, Please Don’t Mistake My Apathy For A Lack of Understanding, in response to VentureBeat’s piece iPhone devotion blinds Silicon Valley app developers.

Mike, who is a very experienced mobile developer and technologist in general, writes about his apathy for all the companies and people how now seem to “get it” when it comes to things such as app stores and ecosystems and the importance of developers; the same companies/people who made the life of developers next to impossible (i.e. fragmentation, cost/fees, certifications, lack of support, failing to deliver, over-control) when trying to develop mobile applications in the past. The same companies/people responsible for slowing down advancements in mobility because of lame excuses and FUD and control — that is, until Apple with the iPhone showed them differently.

My comment (modified a bit) that I left on his blog follows:

Agreed. It took Apple the vision to create the integrated experience that even non-techies get how to discover and download of apps. It took Apple to show/change the playing field, vs. being a “yes man”. And it took Apple show how a touch experience and mobile browsing should be, while others were afraid of taking step and while others didn’t get it at all. And, it took Apple to show it is about the experience and ecosystem and the developers to bring value to the mobile platform. Amazing, isn’t it?

Now everyone is copying. Now everyone “gets it”.

But it is good to see now that everyone else is “getting it”, and are doing something about it.

But I agree, don’t call developers blind (or stupid), as what developers are doing is just the opposite – it is not about devotion — it is about low investment, quick time to market, exposure, and large as possible ROI. And as others platform get to show good return potential, developers will develop for those as well… Show us the money!

ceo

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