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.
Tag Archive for 'developer program'
This week’s Carnival is hosted by Burning the Bacon with Barrett. It includes an interesting article from Francisco Kattan “Why Droid will hurt RIM more than the iPhone” where he predicts and outlines why he believes the new Droid will fail to impact the iphone and will instead take a bite out of the blackberry. Check out other articles including; the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition by Volker Hirsch and C. Enrique Ortiz’ perspective on where the NFC industry is at and what it needs to do to start reaching its potential.
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.
This week the Carnival comes from MSearchGroove. This collection of posts provides us welcome access to keys lists and industry resources as well as the inside track on what makes one social network such a phenomenal success. The article from Mobile Mandala is quite eye-opening. Mark walks us through some surprising numbers from the source and wakes us up to the wealth of opportunities around giving people who don’t own smartphones a good user experience.
WIP is pleased to announce a Marketing Partners with the Navteq LBS Challenge.
The NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is open – Register Now!
Enter your location-enabled app and you could win a share of a $10 million global prize pool
The NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is the premier competition in the wireless industry, inviting developers to build innovative location-based services (LBS) apps using NAVTEQ digital maps. Register now at www.LBSChallenge.com.
Why should I enter?
More exposure for your application:
Get the invaluable exposure needed to launch your app. Over 32% of post Global LBS Challenge finalists have received venture capital funding or launched commercially-distributed applications.
More prizes to win:
The global prize pool for this year’s competition starts at a record $8.2 million USD in cash and licenses and is expected to grow. In addition, a number of special recognition awards will be given in different categories.
More platforms and devices to target:
Contestants may now submit their pre-commercialized location-based applications for any platform and for any device, using NAVTEQ map data.
Registration is open for all regions.
Stop dreaming and START developing the next great LBS solution. Map out your future and get into the fast lane.
Registration Deadlines:
EMEA: November 6, 2009 (extended)
North America: November 20, 2009
India: December 11, 2009
South America: February 12, 2010
APAC: March 5, 2010
For official rules, key dates, and to register go to www.LBSChallenge.com
WIP is pleased to partner with Developer Events, Mobile Conferences and Contests all over the word. Please see our wip connector event’s page for more events.
We are pleased to bring you an interview with Erik Starck, Community Manager, Developer World, Sony Ericsson. Sony Ericsson is a Developer’s Choice sponsor at WIPJam @ CTIA taking place on October 8th in San Diego.
1. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the industry as a whole?
Definitely the move over to open source platforms. That changes the logic behind innovation creation. As it drives the cost of the platforms down it moves the resources of the entire industry over to applications and services.
2. What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in mobile development specifically?
Well, as a consequence of the above application developers are in a better spot than ever. The playing field has been leveled between developers, carriers and device manufacturers. It’s a better time than ever to be a mobile developer.
3. It’s pretty tough for small mobile development companies to survive on just one device and/or one market. What’s your advice to our mobile developers for growing a successful company?
It’s no different than for any other business. Know your customer and your markets, don’t focus on technology but on the value you can create for your customers. As always, user experience is key. If your coming from a web paradigm there are some things you need to rethink. A person should be able to use your application with one hand while riding a bike. If that’s possible you have a simple enough UI. 
4. What do you think are the top 2 – 3 mistakes mobile development companies tend to make?
- Don’t be afraid to charge for your product. Free only gets you that far.
- “Distribution, distribution, distribution.” How easy is it to find your app, recommend it to someone, spread it?
- There are lots of “me too”-applications out there. Be innovative, try something new, test the limits!
5. In the global marketplace – what are you seeing that are hot geographic markets?
There’s lots of interesting stuff happening in Africa. In many ways they are ahead of the rest of the world especially when it comes to mobile payments. There are many emerging markets all over the world where the phones on the street are still quite basic, but they will be moving over to more advanced platforms in just a few years. These are markets where the mobile phone will play a key part in peoples’ lives in ways we haven’t fully realized yet.
6. How do you think our mobile developers can take advantage of these hot/growing areas?
The mobile phone is actually the personal phone. Since it such a personal device you really have to understand the cultural context in which you’re trying to sell your application. Maybe you should leave your keyboard and start traveling for a while to get some new ideas.
7. What’s your current role at Sony Ericsson? And how do you think you can support our mobile dev? I’m the community manager at Developer World. We run a developer forum, blogs and have a Twitter account. Join us there!
Leading up to our WIPJam Session on October 8 @ CTIA in San Diego, we have asked Lauren Thorpe, Senior Director, Developer Relations, Qualcomm Incorporated, a series of questions regarding the mobile industry. Lauren is part of the first WIPJam UnPanel taking place @ 11:15 am.
You’re a veteran in the mobile industry having been with MForma, Helio, THQ and now Qualcomm. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the industry as a whole?
Finally people are looking at and “touching” their devices rather than just holding them up to their ear. For years I would travel around and observe people while they waited in airports and train stations, desperately trying to find someone who was a potential customer; someone who was playing a game or using an application on their device (other than email, of course). In the early days, while trying to pull marketing materials together there weren’t even any stock photos of people doing things other than talking on a mobile phone. The biggest change I have seen is with people – consumers finally get that there are lots of really cool things you can do on your mobile device besides just talk. We are finally seeing a hint of the full potential of mobile.
What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in mobile development specifically?
Mobile developers have been dealing with device and platform fragmentation for years. This isn’t going away any time soon, especially as new platforms seem to be proliferating. However, during this time, developers have gotten really smart and built some amazing tools and middleware to help manage this complexity. As a result, I believe developers are in a better position to compensate for device variation today. There’s also been a significant change the way user experiences are developed for mobile. In the early days – whether it was for WAP or an application – we brought other experiences to mobile, trying to cram an experience not made for mobile onto a 125 x 125 pixel screen. That’s a miserable user experience! As a development community we have moved on a long way toward “made for mobile”, which enables more positive user experiences and the hope for repeat business.
It’s pretty tough for small mobile development companies to survive on just one device and/or one market. What’s your advice to our mobile developers for growing a successful company?
Reach is clearly important to a developer achieving commercial success. However, it’s important to scale profitably. There are obviously lots of factors that impact this, but I would encourage developers to look for platforms that showcase the quality of their application, underscore their value proposition and deliver a good return, and then look at volume. Stay true to your core values since no amount of scale will make up for a poor user experience.
What do you think are the top 2 – 3 mistakes mobile development companies tend to make?
I think the biggest mistake is probably in building applications for the lowest common denominator device. At one level this simplifies the post-production/backend process. However, it’s likely to be at the expense of the overall end user experience which turns off consumers. Another mistake I’ve seen is in building an application without taking into consideration what platforms and devices it will eventually run on. This requires developers to stay on top of the market and be prepared to respond quickly to trends because putting in touch or accelerometer as an afterthought can degrade an application and definitely drives up cost and time to market.
In the global marketplace – what are you seeing that are hot geographic markets?
Certainly emerging economies are seeing a lot of growth based on advancements in the data capabilities of lower-tier devices. China and India continue to be hot spots of growth. However, we’re also seeing innovation coming out of Latin America. Here I would point to América Móvil, who is bringing more advanced data services to market including mobile widgets and new app stores. In developed markets, it’s fair to say that the iPhone App Store is driving a wave of innovation. The US is a hotbed of activity right now as carriers look to capitalize on the “new” app store phenomenon.
How do you think our mobile developers can take advantage of these hot/growing areas?
From a business perspective, Operators and OEMs are moving to create marketplaces for their various platforms. They *need* a strong development community – the more diverse the better – so in a sense the market is wide open. However, this creates a bit of a paradox. There seem to be too many go-to-market options. Developers can benefit by seeking out companies that are actively building cross-platform and cross-channel ecosystems to help them scale and address a broader set of opportunities. The can also look at partnering with aggregators to enter new markets, sharing revenue, but also risk as they prove out the opportunity. Once developers have identified their channel, there’s the challenge of scaling technically. Here developers can look at building apps in a way that makes it easy to swap out resources, for example supporting multiple languages by making it easy to swap out text files. They can also look at developing relationships with local porting shops to be able to correctly cover local devices with lower start up costs.
What’s your current role at Qualcomm? And how do you think you can support our mobile development companies’ growth?
Now I can provide a much better answer to your earlier question of how mobile developers can take advantage of global opportunities! At Qualcomm, I am responsible for growing our developer ecosystem. This means helping developers find cost efficient, high revenue paths to market working with more than 60 operators, more than 60 device makers and across more than 1,000 handset models worldwide. In terms of practical details, we work side by side with developers to identify commercial opportunities and provide a channel through which they can address them. We continue to introduce developers to new products like Plaza Mobile Internet – an end-to-end widget solution – and Plaza Retail – our device and platform agnostic storefront – in addition to the BREW solution. Lastly, we are working to streamline the process of porting, testing and commercializing against multiple devices across multiple networks worldwide. We have some interesting updates coming over the next few months in this regard so stay tuned!
We’ve asked our speakers and sponsors to provide some blog fodder as a lead up to our WIPJam Session on October 8 @ CTIA in San Diego!
The following is brought to you by Mitch Oliver, vice president of ecosystem development for Qualcomm.
Although the mobile applications market has been evolving since 2001, the year Qualcomm launched one of the first app stores with BREW, the pace of innovation has picked up significantly over the past two years. Following the launch of the iPhone 3G in 2008, with which Apple became the poster-child for the modern day “App Store”, there has been a proliferation of market channels for mobile apps.
This competition for attention appears to be paying dividends for developers. Industry efforts to improve the quality of tools, lower the cost of testing and certification, speed time to market, and (most importantly) promote these solutions to consumers have resulted in an explosion of applications. While a catalog of several hundred applications used to be considered a well-stocked store, now the benchmark may be more like the thousands.
The problem is that it’s getting harder and harder for developers to stand out in today’s mobile app stores. A lucky few have a truly ground-breaking application, or sufficient negotiating power, to get featured in a national ad campaign or placed at the top of the store. What about the rest?
This is an increasingly well documented problem in the blogosphere. While a long-tail of content is ultimately good for the consumer, developers need new ways to manage the marketing of their application in a crowded space and consumers need better ways to filter their choices. Here, we’d like to offer a few thoughts on the things that developers should be asking of their app store partners to improve the merchandising and management of their applications:
- Tools that allow developers to directly influence consumer purchase behavior. These can encompass traditional promotional vehicles such as in-store banners and microstores, but consideration should also be given to the use of externally driven tools such as deep-linking to content in the storefront from messages or third party sites (developer websites, social networks). Flexible pricing models, including trials, time-based “passes”, upgrades, and two-fers, in addition to paid placements are also important elements in the promotional mix.
- A strong recommendations engine is a big plus. This exposes consumers to a broader range of content than they may have otherwise discovered while also managing the paradox of choice. By allowing the right content to find willing consumers over time, and moving from search to discovery, the overall ecosystem can support a greater range of viable, long-tail content . In Qualcomm’s experience content uplifts in excess of 20% are possible with good quality recommendations.
- Lastly, reporting and analytics tools that allow developers to track their performance, understand revenue drivers and evaluate the impact of placement, campaigns and pricing models are key to bring this all together and optimize the marketing mix. These should be simple, straightforward and offer a way to compare different channels.
Qualcomm is addressing a number of these areas today with the Plaza suite of products. However, we also need to come together as an industry to truly realize the potential of mobile merchandising and marketing. Join me at the upcoming WIPJAM @ CTIA for a lively discussion on merchandising and marketing your applications. Look forward to jamming with you!
Carnival #186 at allaboutiPhone.net is a speed write from host Matt Radford that deftly touches important bases so you can jump to the week’s best mobile blogging. Check out Chetan Sharma’s latest US Wireless Data Market Update – Q2 2009. It’s crammed full of interesting analysis including the following: The App vs. Mobile Web discussion reached a surprisingly new crescendo. The evolution is pretty clear – for the applications that don’t require significant UI resources, it will be better to develop in for the browser, for intensive games, the native platform will be ahead of the browser advances. The location API access on the iPhone browser is breakthrough to have developers start thinking about the webapps.
Here at WIP, we are thrilled that our Founder and CEO, Caroline Lewko, has been named as one of the top 10 Women in Wireless by FierceWireless.
Fierce Wireless selected the top 10 for their accomplishments, their technical savvy, their leadership–and perhaps most importantly, their influence on the industry. As stated in their publication “These are the women who you often see speaking at industry events, working on various committees or negotiating tough deals. From entrepreneurs who have turned their passions into successful ventures to savvy executives who are climbing the corporate ladder in traditionally male-dominated firms, these are the women that the industry should keep an eye on in 2009 and beyond.”
Caroline is in great company on the Top 10 Women in Wireless list. She is joined by the following dynamic women: Cathy Avgiris, Comcast; Jill Braff, Glu Mobile; Venetia Espinoza, T- Mobile; Peggy Johnson, Qualcomm; Selino Lo, Ruckus Wireless; Kelly Owens St. Julian, Boost Mobile; Viviane Reding, European commissioner for Information Society and Media; Cher Wang, Co-founder and chairperson of HTC; and Christy Wyatt, Motorola.
Many of you know Caroline as the “connector”. In fact, she describes herself as a consummate ‘connector’ with a passion for wireless! Active in the wireless/telecom industry since 1995, she has been a coder, funder, business developer and entrepreneur. She is sought out by investors and C level executives for insights, contacts and advice; and has advised and funded hundreds of companies.
If you haven’t met Caroline yet, you probably will–very soon. She spends much of her time traveling around the world, attending conferences and doing what she does best–bringing together various industry players.
At WIP, we aim to bring developers together with the rest of the wireless ecosystem to help shorten development times and foster innovation. We give emerging wireless companies an extra edge in getting products and services to market with global partnerships, events like WIPJam Sessions; Go to Market programs and websites like the WIPwiki (a membership and resource tool). WIP partners with wireless organizations and Developer Programs around the world. According to FierceWireless, “At a time when mobile developers are in high demand, an organization such as WIP is providing a tremendous service to the developer community.” More information about Caroline and WIP is available on our website.
It is interesting to note that Caroline is the only woman on the list who Tweets.
