This week it is Martin Wilson from Indigo102’s turn to provide his take on a week in mobile. Here are some of the week’s highlights: “Location” is the topic for Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens, who praises Nokia for going back to grass roots and believes Nokia is setting the agenda as an industry leader once again. Praise continues for Nokia as Dennis Bournique, at Wap Review, gives his views on the N900 and describes how he believes it represents the next generation of mobile browsing.
Our own Caroline Lewko interviewed industry veteran Francisco Kattan, from Alcatel Lucent, about the changing shape of mobile development. Kattan gives his views and demonstrates how Alcatel Lucent is firmly focused on supporting developers. This support is evident by their sponsorship of the WIPJam taking place February 18th at MWC App Planet.
Archive for the 'Mobile Jam Session' Category
On the 14th of January, just a few days after CES, I interviewed Patrick Mork VP of Marketing at GetJar, talking about the appstore boom at CES, the notion of openness in the appstore world, and the latest developer portal Getjar are launching. So here’s a quick summary in words… but also the overall interview is available as a podcast, this is the first time we’re experimenting with audio so let us know what you think of it!
Download the whole podcast: 
WIP: CES has seen the launch of numerous appstores (as a reminder the AT&T AppCenter, Samsung Apps TV, Intel AppUp, YourAppshop) do you think the future of appstores lies in an increasing number of them in 2010?
Patrick: The future of appstores is a bit like throwing a rock in the air, it will likely come and crash down! There’s a rush towards appstores at the moment following the Apple success and the failure of operators in the content space. Runn
ing an appstore is difficult and I predict a majority of them will die in the coming 12 months. Major difficulties in running an appstore lie in the ability to source good content and the ability to control the quality of the content.
Getjar CEO Ilja Laurs predicted that the future of appstore
would be in openness(slide 14). Is this something you’re acting on already?
Openness is about offering consumers the best possible experience. It should be about offering the application that was developed by the person with the best capability to write the content, not necessarily the company who own and control the appstores. An open ecosystem is about having no barriers in terms of what content gets uploaded on Getjar and not forbidding a browser to be uploaded because there’s already a browser there 
. Having said that Getjar is very mindful of protecting brands and developers as well as ensuring decency and integrity of content for end users but we do not want to play the role of king makers amongst developers we want to give end-users the choice.
A few other things we do is we do not enforce signing, we do not limit the number of updates, fast and guarant
eed submission time (48 hours)
Getjar recommendations are based on user recommendations and advertising, where does openness fit into this?
Openness can be seen in the fact that recommendations by end-users are the main drivers rather than a skewed recommendation based on a limited number of applications present in your store .
Obviously the recommendation algorithm, (based on reviews, downloads and rating) is not public, there are limit to openness. The second operating principle is advertising which is critical to give developers the chance to promote their apps, in this sense we’re unique not only because we allow promotion but also because the promotion is performance based on a pay per download basis.
So apps are free on GetJar today and on top of that I need to pay for advertising… so how I do I make money?
There’s a misconception in the market today that free means no money, there are quite a few examples there, Opera Mini (paid paid by Google for the search traffic they drive), Flirtomatic (virtual gifts) or games publishers putting free applications on GetJar and selling premium versions of their applications.
The paid for apps model we see as not being the most successful one. The statistics by Flurry published a few month back shows that the average iPhone apps made $7500 on the appstore, it’s just not enough to make a living.
We shouldn’t forget that monetizing content on mobile is an industry challenge not just a challenge for GetJar. If you compare this with the Facebook economy there hasn’t been a single example in mobile of a developer growing to a multimillion dollar business and making an exit, when Playfish did.
Having said that Getjar will introduce paid for apps in the second half of the year in US and UK (interesting news!!)
Analytics and sharing of information seems to be key to allow developers to make the right development, pricing and distribution choices. How do you position yourself on Analytics?
The new GetJar developer portal (I loved it!)
Analytics are a feature that Getjar provides increasingly more to developers through our new developer portal. Getjar now allows developer to see not only how many downloads you have per country, per device, per operating system but also to compare it with an average of all the applications on Getjar! Getjar also makes available trending on a per device basis and per operating system basis to allow developers to port their apps to new platforms. More importantly we provide opportunity mapping telling you the opportunity you could generate if you were present on certain handsets!You can also see top 20 apps per download per preceding day and week per country!
We believe this is pretty unique and we’d be glad to get feedback during the WIPJam session at MWC.
We will start organizing a weekly series of webinar Getjar to help developers access and use this functionality, and sharing our knowledge around using Getjar to promote your app.
What about malware? (this was recorded just after malware was reported on Android)
Smartphones are more associated with malware and with their current rise the the rise of malware is almost unavoidable.
Appstores are all about balance, ensuring fast approval AND quality insurance.. and this is a difficult balance to reach. At Getjar we guarantee that your app will be on Getjar 48 hours after submission (or at least to get a response) AND we try to maintain quality standards from this perspective we’re pretty unique among Android Market being fast (24 hours) and low quality on one side and Apple Appstore being slow (up to 7 months) and high quality on the other side.
Top countries for January 2010 downloads on Getjar
| Country | Current Period | Previous Period | Trend | |||
| Indonesia | 14,454,167 | 13,736,562 |  5% |
|||
| India | 8,661,600 | 7,774,230 | 11% |
|||
| United States | 4,817,565 | 3,815,531 | 26% |
|||
| United Kingdom | 1,356,746 | 1,400,482 |  3% |
|||
| Egypt | 1,280,035 | 1,216,057 | 5% |
|||
| South Africa | 1,263,530 | 1,240,341 | 2% |
|||
| Viet Nam | 742,146 | 824,177 | 10% |
|||
| Bangladesh | 707,025 | 687,147 | 3% |
|||
| Pakistan | 691,005 | 632,533 | 9% |
|||
| Turkey | 659,932 | 455,913 | 45% |
GetJar has traditionally been associated with Java devices is the rise of smartphones a bad thing for you?
GetJar stands for APPSOLUTELY EVERYTHING so we’re targeting all handsets wether Java platforms or smartphones. Developers however shouldn’t forget that Java devices continue to be the majority of phones in the market and the only way for developers to be financially successful is to be cross-platform.
The positive news for developers with the increasing awareness of mobile apps is that it has had a hugely positive impact on the sales of apps on feature phones. As an example we now do about 50 M downloads a month compared to 14 M a year ago, with 50% of business still on Java phones. The US in particular has grown from nowhere on our top list to being number 3 in our download figures, developing markets like India and Indonesia have also grown 2 to 3 times faster than the US market. 25% of our North American consumers download content once a day, and globally the figure goes up to 36%.
Apps Apps Apps so what about the Mobile web, how does it play in your strategy?
Among Getjar users mobile usage we predicted the rise of the mobile web. In a survey done a year ago we saw that 65% of users were using their mobile more than their PC to access the web. We do encourage mobile web development as we recognize it as a way to overcome platform fragmentation That’s why we introduced mobile site shortcuts a year back, an icon that’s been downloaded onto the end-user phone and appears as an app even though it’s only a link back to a website. It allows developers to cut on developement costs. Mobile site shortcuts are now 10% of our traffic. Facebook for example using this has 31M downloads on GetJar twice the amount of they’ve have done on iTunes!
PS: Obviously you’ll notice my somewhat hesitant pace… for my excuse I wasn’t drunk but just interviewing someone at 1AM my time after a flight ordeal…
Complete with a carnival pic from Rio, Carnival #209 is brought to us by Dennis at WAP Review. It is bursting with great material as always. Here is a small selection of what you will find: “iPad: The (attempted) Windows killer” by Michael Mace; Mobile Mandala’s Mark Jaffe makes a wake up call to the mainstream entertainment business in Mobile Is Not An Island; and an interview with WIPJam Lead Sponsor Ericsson submitted by the WIP Team who are getting ready for WIPJam on February 18th taking place in the new App Planet at MWC. Jam On!
This week’s offering is brought to us by Volker on Mobile complete with carnival masks for carnival season.
Aviv Revach looks forward to the Mobile World Congress and is once again compiling a list of networking events. We know that he has already signed up for our WIPJam taking place on Thursday, February 18 at MWC in App Planet. It is a great networking event for developers and this one is shaping up to be our best one yet! The Carnival also features a WIPJam post written by our guest Malik Saadi, Principal Analyst at Informa. His article explains how the emergence of a fragmented smartphonosphere will make native development incredibly more difficult to scale and thus less and less economically viable and much more.
Mobile World Congress is coming up VERY soon! Yikes. It’s time to go through the checklist:
- airfare booked – check
- room booked – check
- signed up for WIPJam – check!
Wait a minute…. are you telling me you you haven’t done any of these yet :-0
Well – you are in luck! Because WIP is a Mobile World Congress App Planet Partner, it’s not too late to get yourself signed up and even get some good deals.
FIRST the travel
Hotel deals: MWC has identified several hotels in Barcelona that do not require a minimum stay. This is perfect for developers and guests that will only be attending a specific App Developer Conference or a limited portion of the Congress.
Airfare deals: Save up to 30% on domestic and up to 20% on international travel to Barcelona between 10 February 2010 and 23 February 2010 with Spanair and the Star Alliance Network.
To take advantage go to: http://www.appplanethotel.beinbeyond.com/
UserName: WIP
Password: Developer
There are also lots of great apartments around to share. We know a few folks who are looking for some roomies – let us know if you’d like to connect.
NOW for WIPJam and FREE Passes to MWC!
WIP has 200 Guest/Exhibit passes for entry to MWC2010, to give to eligible developers to attend(that’s a 599 Euro value). What’s an eligible developer you ask? We will favor small companies, you must attend WIPJam, and you have to write something creative on the WIPJam registration page!
Why attend WIPJam?
Well – you wouldn’t ask that if you were a Jam veteran! It’s a great place to learn about mobile development, participate in discussions to find out information really relevant to YOU, and to meet and connect with LOTS of people in the mobile developer ecosystem that can start making a difference in your business right way.
Check out the Agenda! Featuring:
1 WIP Buzz Session
2 UnPanels – #1 Sticky and Spready Redux, #2 App Store Placement Optimization
8 Discussion Groups: Cross Platform Development, Merchandising your Application, Opportunities in Open Source, Mobile Web Development, Emerging Markets, Augmented Reality, Features and Enhancements for Addictive Apps and Getting Cool Content from the Cloud
1 Lunch
10+ Demos
200+ Jammers
Great sponsors like:
Qualcomm, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Enough Software, MoSync, O2 Litmus, Perfecto Mobile, GetJar and Oracle.
And here are just some of the speakers:
Sean Galligan, Flurry
Mark Curtis, Flirtomatic
Francisco Kattan , Alcatel Lucent
Simon Davies, Snaptu
Patrick Mork, Getjar
Deep Shah, Buzzd
Katie Lips, Kisky Netmedia
Robert Virkus, Enough Software
Eran Yaniv, Perfecto Mobile
Charles McLeod, MetaFlow
Matts Bergrund, Swirly Space
Tony Hartley, MoSync
Ofir Leitner, Mobile Monday Televiv
James Parton, O2 Litmus
Emmanuel Ekuwem, ATCON (Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria)
Lester Madden, Augmented Planet
David Caabeiro, Sequence Point
Patrik Nordstrom, idevio
Scott Jensen, LegiTime
Raj Singh, Skyfire
Stephen Cull, Oracle
and of course Caroline Lewko (me) and Thibaut Rouffineau of WIP facilitating, ringing bike bells, cutting off any visible ties and making sure the developer voice is heard loud and clear!
More details to come as we wrap up sponsors and speakers! See you soon.
We are pleased to introduce Qualcomm as a Developer’s Choice Sponsor for the WIPJam @ MWC on February 18, 2010. The WIPJam will take place in The App Planet at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Registration is open!
With over 2B revenue generating transactions, over $2B in developer earnings and an addressable base of more than 200 M devices, Qualcomm Incorporated, a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services, continues to deliver exciting and profitable market opportunities for developers. Visit the Qualcomm Developer Network at developer.qualcomm.com for content, resources and news on the products and services that are enabling developers and publishers to create extraordinary consumer experiences. Discover how to deliver high quality applications and services to the broadest array of devices. Identify new revenue streams and go-to-market opportunities. And join us in shaping the future of mobile one application at a time.
This week, the Carnival is hosted by Mobile Strategy where you will find thought-provoking pieces, inside scoops, tough questions and overall interesting posts on a variety of topics. Included is an interview that our Wipster Thibaut conducted with Victor Shaburov, the CEO of Handster, a company that provides a mobile appstore and specializes in white label appstores for OEM and Operators.
We are pleased to announce the next stop on the WIPJam World Tour!
Mini WIPJam
January 6, 2010 (day before CES)
Las Vegas
at the AT&T Developer Summit
The AT&T Developer Summit offers a completely customizable experience based upon your unique needs. Exciting announcements will set you on track for the day during the morning General Session, including the Keynote by Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets.
The afternoon offers breakout sessions with two technical tracks dedicated to Software Developers, as well as Commercialization & Marketing and Emerging Devices Organization for Marketing and Business professionals.
The evening is chock full of networking, delicious dinner & drinks, and Vegas style entertainment.
If you are a techie, join the AT&T Code Camp from 10 PM – 3 AM for a fun night of coding and other surprises!
Check out the Summit website for Registration and more information
Stay tuned for more details on WIPJam activities.
WIPJam is back at Mobile World Congress. Make sure to save
Thursday, February 18, 2010 for WIPJam a Day for Developers.
It is going to be a great event once again!
In 2010, WIP is thrilled to be a Gold Partner with the GSMA Mobile World Congress. We are also a Partner with their new App Planet that is taking over Hall 7 at the 2010 Congress.
App Planet is an “event within an event” at Mobile World Congress 2010 that will present a unique opportunity to explore the many dimensions of the dynamic and critically important mobile applications market. By pulling all the key players together in one place at one time, App Planet will be new Center of the Apps Universe for the four days of Mobile World Congress.
Plans are well underway for WIPJam @ MWC so stay tuned.
Qualcomm has already joined us as a sponsor with more to come!
We are currently looking for speakers/sponsors. Please contact us if you want to participate. Jam On!
This week Tsahi Levent-Levi of Radivision VoIP Survivor hosts from Israel. He sums up Carnival #194 saying the best thing about it was the variety, of both content and medium, with regular posts, guest posts, interviews, presentation a round up and even a podcast. It also includes a post from WIPJam on the Ideal Apps Store and a blog for the WIPJam taking place on October 8 at CTIA!
