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Ovi Developer Event London – Write Up

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Ovi Developer Event

Quick write up from this morning’s Ovi Developer Event run by Nokia at the Century Club in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue.

Roughly 100 odd people showed up with standing room only, so it demonstrated that the London mobile crowd is clearly interested to hear Nokia’s story. I suspect the promotion across Mobile Monday London helped as I spotted a few familiar faces in the crowd. Attendees over indexed on business types, as a voluntary show of hands revealed only about 25% of the crowd were coders.

#ovidevsldn on Twitpic

There was a degree of confusion about the purpose of the event, with messages mixed between a developer event and a launch event for the upcoming N8 handset, so may be that helps explain the relativity low developer turn out for a “developer” event.

The was an air of expectation, mixed with some healthy cynicism, as evidenced on the event Twitter stream #ovidevsldn.

Mark Loughran, Nokia UK MD opened up proceedings and highlighted a couple of recent Ovi success stories. He also mentioned that Ovi was running its first UK TV campaign in August – more on that in a second.

Janaina Pilomia from Forum Nokia then ran through the changes on Forum Nokia. The main message was one of simplification. Forum Nokia has been re-designed to focus around three core elements: Design, Develop, and Distribute.

Design focuses on research, conceptual design, prototyping, access to UX evaluation experts, design and optimization.

The clear message around Develop was that the previous Nokia offering was too complex. IT has now been consolidated down to three core areas web apps, java apps, and QT native apps (pronounced as Cutee)

There are also three target device grouping: Phones (S40), smart phones (Symbian), and Computers (Maemo / MeeGo)

It was noted that QT (based on C++ ) already has a 100,000 strong developer community on desktop apps and  Skype was given as an example of a QT desktop app. (figure edited after comment from Hamish Wille)

Windows, Mac or Linux SDK’s available, with one click installs – tools, build, debug, and testing on host PC’s. Developer no longer need device specific SDK’s, and Janaina also referenced a live handset testing environment that sounded like Device Anywhere, but was not confirmed.

Amongst the new api’s are ones for sensors, location, and messaging. Nokia pushed the “write in once” native development framework then compile for Meego, Symbian etc

QT comes preinstalled on Symbian ^3 onwards, with install on demand for earlier devices – the smart installer is available now from Forum Nokia.

QT Quick is a user interface creation kit, with visual tools for UI creation based on QML language (extension to JavaScript)

The QT web runtime – runs on top of QT and QT webkit, and is a W3C standards bases web runtime (HTML 5, CSS 3) and open source.

Moving on to Distribute, individuals can now publish to Ovi store  (as opposed to registered companies), with Nokia “taking the risk” as the publisher. There is a public beta of Nokia signing Symbian apps for free.  “That’s how much we care”. Note the offer only applies if publishing in the Ovi store, not for independent distribution.

Keith Varty from UK Services and Marketing came next to preview the Ovi TV ad due to break on the 9th August. He described the work that Nokia are doing to directly influence big brands, quoting over 50 branded apps were now available in Ovi, like MTV, Tesco, and the Daily Mirror.

He said a reminder to the brands that Nokia own 37% of the UK Smartphone market and deliver 1.7 million app downloads a day surprises the brands, who I suspect suffer from iPhone blindness. The TV ad features Spotify, You Tube and Sky on the end frame.

Keith also discussed the summer Ovi press campaign, run in The Metro and The Sun over the last 8 – 10 weeks featuring topical themes like festivals / weddings / holidays highlighting apps in the Ovi catalogue.  They have also used their creative agency, Marvlous, to create a series of “rapid apps” to leverage PR opportunities – fun / different, e.g. world class excuses for missing work to watch the world cup.

We got some additional statistics; the average user downloads 8 content items (no time period quoted), Q2 2010 saw a 100% increase in downloads vs Q1 2010, 11 million people have  downloaded Nokia’s free sat nav app, the most popular download devices are 5800, X6, N97 mini, and tellingly everyday 1.2 billion people use a Nokia phone.

We then were treated to a demo of the N8 in action, and it is an impressive piece of kit. A home screen demo showed the customizable UI, the user can add modules like iGoogle. Ovi has direct home screen access, and live content can be displayed from your email inbox, Facebook, etc.

N8 homescreen from #ovidevsldn on Twitpic

Some time was spent showing off the phones video capabilities. The N8 can output at 720p resolution, has HDMI out and can play HD video at 25 fps. It also has Dolby 5.1, and can play BBC iPlayer content at 30 fps making the N8 a great entertainment choice. The video chip can motor at 60 fps for menus and cover flow art work in the music application.

A new feature “USB on the go” was demoed. Via an adapter in the box, a standard USB stick can be plugged into the N8, opening a window on the phone UI, offering full drag and drop and playback functionality.

The N8 comes with 16Gb memory onboard, expandable by 32Gb via SD. The battery can handle 7 hours HD video playback or 50 hours music play back. There is an FM transmitter onboard, and a 12mp camera, with mechanical shutter & wide angle lense.

The hardware demo impressed the crowd (see twitter stream for more commentary) it really is packing a hell of a lot in. Nokia has tried this approach in past and I hope that the “swiss army” knife approach doesn’t mean Nokia struggle to effectively position the device. Sony Ericsson successfully segmented their phones: Walkman (great music) and Cybershot (great camera). Time will tell if Nokia successfully convey the right message for the N8 when it packs so much in.

There were some rumblings of disappointment that an event labeled “developer” lacked any detailed technical information, it also felt like a missed opportunity to reach out to the independent developer crowd. Rather than working with indie developers, Nokia had worked exclusively with their agency to create widgets to support their ad campaign, and the theme of the marketing message was Nokia’s focus on working with tier one brands, seemingly at the expense of the indie’s. I understand the reasons for Nokia doing this from the consumer perspective, as the end punter wants to see brands they know and trust, but none the less, a more polished story around how Nokia can support indie developers from a marketing perspective would have been welcomed.

The partner story was also missing. I’m not sure if that is because there is no partner story, or if there wasn’t time to cover it, but there was a sense that it was a Nokia closed ecosystem – it would be nice to understand how a developer working with Nokia can open up other opportunities and it would make sense for Nokia to leverage its powerful relationships throughout the Mobile ecosystem to the benefit of developers.

Overall the event, and N8, seemed to be well received with some positive sentiment on Twitter. I guess the key challenge for establishing the N8 in the UK will be that its primary target audience will already be locked into long term iPhone contracts. To grow its 37% UK Smartphone market share, Nokia will need to tackle this issue head on by either aggressive targeting of iPhone users, or by attempting to sell into the UK market currently not carrying Smartphones, or both. However, today left me with the strong feeling that Nokia are not out of this game.

Follow the Twitter back channel here: #ovidevsldn

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Mobile Monday London Write Up – “200,000 apps, where’s mine?”

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

MoMo London 19/07/10

Opening up was Mike Kirkup, Head of Developer Relations at RIM, who were sponsoring the evening. Mike touched on the theme of “super apps” and promoted the current Blackberry Super App contest with $1.5 million in prize money available, plus take to market support for the winners. Check the contest out here.

Next up was the panel segment to provide advice and insights into the topic for the evening

The panel was chaired by Ben Scott Robinson, creative director at We Love Mobile and included:

  • Chair: Ben Scott-Robinson – Creative Director, We Love Mobile
  • Chris Bourke – MD, Mobext
  • Dave Burrows – Director of R&D Interchange Group
  • Alyssa Tisne – VP Strategic Partnerships, 7Digital
  • Tony Pearce – CEO and co-founder, TeePee Games
  • Eli Camilleri – Asssociate, Vision Mobie
  • Mike Kirkup – BlackBerry

    • (Updated: thanks to Adam Cohen Rose for complete panel details, check out his write up here)

    The first question posed was “why apps when mobile web is pretty much ubiquitous?”

    Chris was first to respond. He argued that his agency was using mobile apps to compensate for a lack of speed on mobile connections to deliver a better customer experience. He also made the point that an app gave them a much greater ability to customise the UI and better represent his client’s brands than a mobile browser.

    Alyssa was first to reference the “A word”, saying Apple had set the gold standard in music (7 Digital are a music company). She said 7 Digital preferred the browser route for their music store as it was ubiquitous. MoMo Panel

    Mike tabled that actually much of this current trend towards apps was driven by customer expectation rather than smart technology choices. He cited brands simply publishing shortcuts in Blackberry World seeing uplifts in traffic of 30 – 50% simply because it delivered an app like experience. i.e. it gets your brand (app icon) on the top deck of the handset for instance access. (a shortcut is an icon, which when clicked simply opens the mobile browser and takes you to a mobile website)

    Eli highlighted that it is unlikely your entire potential audience is going to be on one or two platforms so choosing apps over web is going to limit your commercial potential, so you have to balance customer experience with business objectives.

    This brought the second question around the use of customer demographics. Eli made the telling point that actually there is no evidence that developers are doing anything with demographics or other marketing techniques. The recently published Vision Mobile report Developer Economics 2010, available for free here, thanks to Telefonica’s sponsorship, plug plug!, highlighted that the vast majority of developers still limit their “market research” to testing their app out with friends and colleagues. This is not a long term strategy for success.

    Developer Economics 2010

    Tony highlighted that historically the mobile operator was the shop keeper that kept control of how many apps were offered to its customers. With the rise of the apps stores this limitation has gone, but ironically now the noise issue is becoming a major problem for developers with limited marketing budgets / skills.

    Dave made the point that in B2B app distribution, often the users (the employees) are not the purchasers.

    Chris highlighted the time sensitivity around demographic data, citing an anecdotal example of seeing more and more kids carrying iPhones, which demographic data does not show. He also cited the case of shared device usage in the home (e.g. siblings both using an iPhone for gaming) These examples present an opportunity for real time network enablers that can tell you what devices are being used, and by who, at that precise point in time.

    Mike described the recent success of Blackberry penetrating into the youth market. I think he was over modest to say this was not planned. Blackberry exec’s I know where talking about the need to diversify into consumer 2 – 3 years ago. He put the success down to a simple, well executed proposition: Communication. Blackberry’s initial success was opening better communications for CEO’s. Now Blackberry is enabling better consumer communication via Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messenger, signalling a shift from SMS as the primary youth communication method.

    MoMo CrowdChris then tackled apps as a marketing tool. It was clear there are many brands asking for apps without understanding anything about the mobile space, e.g. the limited reach of an iPhone only play. Chris put this down to:

    1)      Wanting association (no matter how tenuous) with a cool brand e.g. Apple

    2)      Seeking a PR opportunity

    Tony used Facebook to highlight the discoverability issues. Facebook has 35,000 games and 250,000 apps yet nobody can name more than a dozen. Only the brands and publishers that have the marketing muscle are driving visibility. Tony’s new company Teepee Games aims to address this by aggregating recommended games for consumers.

    Eli made the point that none of these issues are new, and are no different to the challenges facing FMCG brands fighting over shelf space in a supermarket like Tesco. The Developer Economics 2010 report highlighted developers were willing to pay for premium store placement, a practice well established in traditional bricks and mortar retailing. Eli also raised a good point that paying for placement may only get you so far. There is still the consumer confidence & trust issue of unknown brands.

    Alyssa highlighted that open partnerships was a key element of the marketing mix. 7 Digital has driven downloads by integrating with other partners like Last FM and Shazam. Building relationships with other companies and network operators can help overcome the visibility issues.

    Building on Eli’s point Mike stated these issues were not new, but just new people experiencing them for the first time.

    Dave made the point that the most valuable real estate was the handset itself, and good old fashioned networking with the mobile operators pays off. Preload is vital (see Shazam as a case in point)

    Chris talked about the overall package of actions like PR. Their approach is to create talkability to push the app into the Top 25 of the app store, then let organic downloads drive growth. There is a second hit of PR to promote the app once it drops out of the Top 25.

    Eli highlighted an example of good integrated communications where the Royal Society of Arts have their iPhone app pushed by the girl selling tickets at the entrance desk, contrasting that to Selfridges who make no in store reference to their app at all.

    Mike commented that RIM have been surprised by the rapid growth of Blackberry Messenger (BBM), with some customers going into retail stores asking for BBM without knowing it comes on a Blackberry device.

    When asked about “free” as a marketing tactic Eli commented that makes sense if the app is an extension of your core business e.g. Nike +, but not if your business is the app itself. The point was made that it is very difficult to convert free customers to pay, and freemuim models need to have clear value in the up sell to drive conversion.

    Tony made an interesting point contrasting the mindset of Nokia users with iPhone users. Nokia users don’t baulk at paying £5 for a mobile game, where as iPhone users recoil at the thought of a 59p app. Is this an example of a mobile native mindset vs. a web native mindset?

    Automated App porting tools came up, and Chris said in his experience they were good for heavy lifting and doing volume, but to ensure his clients brands were correctly represented they always do bespoke work saying the porting solutions always breakdown at the edges. Despite having an employee of Grapple ask a challenging question from the audience only seconds before, they suddenly became invisible when offered the chance to respond to the criticism which led to a beautiful awkward silence that Ricky Gervais would have been proud of.

    IMO the best piece of insight from the night came from Chris when asked how developers on a shoe string budget could drive visibility. “Cause trouble” was the answer. He cited You Tube’s early rise to prominence by liberally infringing copyright which didn’t seem to deter Google from buying them. Do something sexy or do something that will get you noticed.

    For me the evening highlighted a tech fuelled market approaching commercial maturity. There is no escaping the basic fact that if you are operating in a competitive environment, trying to make yourself heard to your target audience, there has to be a conscious decision to invest in marketing. You simply can’t ignore that fact or attempt to blame the app store owners for somehow letting you down otherwise you will fail.

    I keep getting a sense that some developers are still seeking a magic / free solution to their marketing issues. This marketing investment doesn’t need to be scarily expensive, and can be totally outsourced if necessary. Still, it was encouraging to see the debate starting to move away from a purely technology feature led conversation, to at least considering the need to do more than the “throw it against a wall and see if it sticks” approach so commonly seen.  Despite “marketing” being an almost taboo word in some developer circles, maybe tonight signalled the beginning of something new…

    You can follow the Twitter stream from the event here.

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    Bedford Tweetup

    Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

    After spontaneously connecting with local Twitter peeps @ericswain and @efficiencycoach, we have all decided to organise a Tweetup for Bedford and the surrounding area.

    It’s set for 18:00 on the 3rd August 2010 at the Embankment Hotel.

    The Eventbrite page to sign up can be found here: http://twtvite.com/bedforduktweetup

    I look forward to meeting you there!

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    Reflecting on my first 2 years of using Twitter

    Friday, July 9th, 2010

    At the risk of looking grossly self indulgent, I’ve felt compelled to write about my experience with Twitter for some time.

    Many writers have described, far more eloquently than I ever could, the social and business impacts of Twitter & social media, so let me state up front that this is purely a personal reflection of my experience of Twitter. I don’t put myself out there as some social media guru. I don’t have that many followers, and I was relatively late to the party.

    However, one of the key stimuli for this piece has been the increasing number of “real life” meetings and interactions with people that begin “Ah, I follow you on Twitter”, so whilst I do have a relatively small following, it would seem to be fairly well targeted and relevant to my work.

    The fact I’m doing this at all highlights for me how remarkable and unique Twitter has become for me. No other online service (or offline for that matter) has ever motivated me to reflect or assess my experience of using it and I’ve been “into” computing since 1982, online since 1994, and running my own website since 1996 so plenty of other things have had the opportunity to grab me!

    Over the past couple of years I have been lucky enough to occupy a fairly high profile role in a large company. My original decision to sign up for Twitter was business led, as I was keen to adopt new communication channels to begin building relationships with potential members for a new service I was planning called O2 Litmus.

    It was very clear from day 1 that Twitter was somewhat unique.

    Firstly I was determined that I would blend both my work and personal worlds. This is challenging to pull off, and I have to say I have failed miserably to achieve this on Facebook, but that’s a story for another time. Despite the commonly held view from Twitter non believers of “just that how important can 140 character text updates be?” the authenticity, especially if you are directly or indirectly representing a large company is vital. For me the worst possible outcome would be people suspecting my use of Twitter was just a marketing tactic, or worse still a PR company posting on my behalf.

    Secondly, I took time to think through “why would people want to follow me?” If all I did was use my account as another channel to announce work related activity it would quickly get dull, and from the marketing mix perspective just duplicate existing channels like our blog and forums.

    In my marketing role I spend a lot of my time reading industry related analysis and news, so I decided to effectively “open source” my desk research. As any marketer will know it’s a significant personal investment to keep on top of your sector, especially one as fast moving as mobile and digital. Therefore I thought why not help people by flagging the stuff I found interesting – this could actually add some real value back to people who took the time to follow me. Little did I know at the time what I was taking on, but the point I’m making was there was a conscious thought process about a) why would people follow me and b) how can I differentiate myself and what I put out.

    In the two years since joining Twitter I have tweeted 3,659 times, averaging exactly 5 posts a day. What I think is intriguing is unlike many services my usage is actually increasing – I’m getting more addicted. There is not the familiar novelty period then gradual decline.

    Researching this post has left me frustrated – there is a real lack of tools that allow you to run analytics on your tweet history. I wanted to share data points like the time it took me to reach my first 1,000 tweets vs. my last 1,000 tweets, intuitively I think creating the last 1,000 has been significantly quicker. What has been my peak day, week or month over the past two years, and what could I attribute those peaks back to, which posts have been most re-tweeted?

    The best I could find was a combination of Tweetscan,Tweetsheet, and Twistory but none of these gave me the historical data analytics I wanted at my finger tips – that would seem a prime monetisation opportunity for Twitter, especially with more and more brands now adopting Twitter as a key element of their marketing mix. If anyone can point me to a tool I’m missing, I’d love to hear from you.

    So what have been the “highlights” from the 3,659 posts and two years?

    Well I’ll admit I’ve shown a complete lack of dedication by not going back through all those messages one by one, although I now suspect I couldn’t even if I wanted to. That should be a key consideration for marketers: backup as you go for easy archive access and analysis. Anyway, four stick in my mind:

    Twitchhiker

    An amazing thing happened 6 months into my use of Twitter proving to me what a powerful business tool Twitter can be. Paul Smith was undertaking a crazy personal challenge for charity, and through Twitter word of mouth I found myself with a great sponsorship opportunity and a chance to support Paul’s remarkable efforts. You can read how the relationship came about in Paul’s own words here, and read a description of the Twitchhiker project here.

    Turning customers into fans

    I wish I could find the original tweet and link out to it, but I can’t. However, the interaction is fairly easy to replay and has happened more than once. A clearly frustrated and angry O2 customer was failing to resolve a problem he was having (I can’t actually remember the detail now, but that doesn’t detract from the point). In desperation he had obviously done a random search of Twitter and found my details and sent me a plea for help. By promptly responding and taking ownership of the problem I like to think I went some small way to turning around his perception of the company that I work for and turned him into a fan. Brands will quickly have to figure out how to measure the value of these kinds of interactions, which will be vital when justifying digital investments.

    Bedford Tweet Up

    No technology or service I’ve ever used seems to have the level of humanity that I’ve experienced with Twitter. People seem to go out of their way to help one another. Even buildings are getting into the act! Big Ben tells me the time and even Heathrow Airport welcomes me and tries to make my “experience” more pleasurable.

    The most trivial of tweet was triggered when I stole the mayoral status for my local train station from a fellow tweeter. Within 17 minutes Eric had suggested setting up a local Tweetup, and my immediate reaction was, “yeah, totally!” no hesitation at all. We are currently planning something for early August and who knows what new networking and relationships that will bring. My question is what makes this kind of behaviour unique to Twitter? Chat boards, forums, and Instant Messaging have been around for years, but no one would have dreamt to suggest these kind of impromptu meets up’s – that would feel like front page of the Daily Mail material…I’ll leave the answer to the “digital” psychologists.

    O2 Litmus is bigger than Christmas

    O2 Litmus is bigger than Christmas

    Finally for a bit of fun, you can’t buy a headline like that. The use of hashtags are vital for tracking conversation and creating community around your activities. When we soft launched O2 Litmus in December 2008 our hashtag trended higher than Christmas, leading us to our cheeky boast. We won’t mention that the West Coast of the US was asleep at the time, that’s just detail ;-)

    So my takeouts from the past two years, for what they are worth:

    1. Carefully consider the work / personal balance of your Twitter account
    2. If you want to build a following, plan out why people should follow you – have a purpose
    3. Ensure your Twitter Bio is fine tuned with key words describing you or your business. You only have 140 characters to get it right.
    4. Take offline backups of your Twitter activity for analytical and good practice purposes. You never know when you may need to look up a statement or commitment you or one of your employees has made
    5. Be prepared for your life to move to being always on and real time. Responsiveness is now measured in minutes, not days or hours. I’m now effectively permanently at work. If you think Blackberry blurred the line, it doesn’t compare. Be ready and embrace it. I can’t go back.
    6. Ensure you and your people recognise they are representing your company at all times, even if tweeting from personal accounts. The web doesn’t respect boundaries – don’t write dumb stuff, and don’t tweet drunk!
    7. Kind of obvious, but no spamming. Don’t pump out unsolicited crap to your followers
    8. Be wary of 3rd party plug in’s. Loads of services now make it easy to connect into your twitter stream, Foursquare being a popular example. Make sure you don’t water down the quality of your output. Only 2.4% of my tweets have been generated by Foursquare, yet I’ve had more than one follower contact me to say they will stop following me if I don’t control frequency of updates.
    9. Be yourself – add personality
    10. Use and promote hastags to create community around your brand or specific activity
    11. Integrate Twitter into your events as a live back channel
    12. Magical stuff “just happens” as your network widens. Unexpected opportunities present themselves from the most innocuous exchanges.

    On a spooky weird closing note, I kid you not that I woke up at 3:00am this morning with the idea for this post swirling in my head, but that not the strange bit…

    After tossing and turning for an hour I decided to stop fighting it and get up and start writing before I lost my inspiration. When I started researching the data points of the post I made a rather freaky discovery; It was exactly two years to the day that I joined Twitter!

    I was so taken aback I took a screen shot of my desktop with my Twitter join date and current date on my desktop. Sure I could have doctored the date on my PC for artistic effect, but believe me I don’t have the time or the inclination ;-)

    Go figure that out!

    2 years to the day baby!

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    Launch of new Telefonica Developer Blog

    Thursday, July 1st, 2010

    So today is a good day.

    Today is one of those days where lots of hard work finally pays off, allowing you to step back and be proud of something. I have been dropping subtle hints at various speaking opps over the past few months that some significant changes are coming to Telefonica developer activity; well today I’m pleased to share one of those milestones.

    We have launched a new blog, replacing the four existing regional blogs we had covering the UK, Spain, Mexico and Argentina. Not only does this mean we dramatically simplify things, but it means that we finally have a technical platform to create something that actually does the job we need it to do!

    You may recall we brought Debi Jones into the Telefonica team a while back, and it’s great that all the hard work that Debi has been putting in behind the scenes since joining the family is now public. Debi is also building out an awesome team of contributors so I really hope the blog becomes a valuable industry resource for all working in the mobile & web development field.

    I’ve penned a brief summary of the year to date on the new blog, so you can read more there. Check it out, sign up as a member and start making some noise!

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    Calling all Technology Marketers!

    Saturday, June 26th, 2010

    The Chartered Institute of Marketing, the world’s largest organisation for professional marketers operates a number of Marketing Interest Groups (MIGs) focused around particular industry sectors. Andy Earnshaw has been invited by The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) to establish a new MIG to cater for technology marketers.

    The aim of this new MIG is fairly straight forward; to provide a platform for people involved in marketing technology to share best practice, learn and network.

    Andy has kindly asked me to support him in the creation and management of the MIG. To aid logistics, reduce the travel burden for participants, and to allow people to build local networks we have decided to split the MIG into North and South chapters. Andy will lead the Northern chapter, and I will lead the Southern chapter.

    My initial idea for the inaugural Southern event is a relaxed informal gathering in London featuring a couple of guest speakers to share real life experiences and insights. No powerpoint – just interesting conversation and great networking.

    Of course like any good marketer, I want to ensure the format works for the intended audience, so nothing is precious or set in stone. Please let me know what you want from the MIG. It goes without saying that any offers of help will be gratefully received! Be that sponsors, venues, speakers, etc.

    In terms of timings, the plan looks like this. Andy and I will finalise our initial thoughts by early July, with the aim of running the first events in October.

    So if you are a marketing practitioner in the technology field or just have a personal interest in marketing tech, then you are more than welcome to join us. To receive official CIM recognition, the MIG needs to attract at least 50 registered CIM members, so please help us to spread the word. However please note you do not have to be a CIM member to come along.

    You can start to engage and make suggestions by joining our Technology MIG Linked In Group.

    I look forward to meeting you soon!

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    Why Mobile Operators have a crucial role to play in the second wave of “smart” apps

    Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

    The following post is a reproduction of my guest blog on VisionMobile.com – please see here for the original.

    The noise level around Apps and App Stores has reached saturation point. Every day a new launch, a new report, or a new statistic hits the newswires.

    We have passed the point where there are now more people accessing the internet via a mobile device than via a PC, overall revenue from mobile apps (including ads, payments, and in-app transactions) is expected to grow to $17.5 billion in 2012 from $4.1 billion today, the iTunes store has delivered more than 3 billion downloads, an App is downloaded every 22 seconds from Nokia’s Ovi store, there are more than 30,000 Apps available in the Android store…you get the idea…

    There can be no doubt that the explosion of interest around the App ecosystem brought home just how important mobile will be as a future content delivery channel, typified by the increasing number of App’s being produced by leading brands. No digital marketer worth their salt would now neglect having an app story in their digital marketing plan, even if in all honesty some are not quite sure why!

    However, make no mistake that we are still firmly in the realms of a version 1.0 ecosystem. The App retail delivery platforms are still very basic; in fact they have not yet significantly evolved in terms of features and capabilities from the content delivery platforms that were offering mobile games, wallpapers and ringtones at the beginning of the decade.

    The Apps themselves are clearly “dumb”. What do I mean by “dumb?” The vast majority of today’s App’s sit on the customer’s handset and have no understanding, or appreciation of its context or the person using it. Yes, increasing numbers of Apps are using location to introduce geographic context, but that is hardly pushing the boundaries of the art of the possible.

    To take the App ecosystem to version 2.0, Apps have to become “smart”. I believe this is where Mobile Operators finally have a key role to play in the progression of the App ecosystem.

    Of course this role is not a divine right. The Mobile Operators need to go through considerable change in order to be able to contribute effectively. That change is both technological: opening up “smart enablers” to allow developers to easily consume these capabilities, and secondly: culturally – to embrace the independent developer community and relax their traditional command and control philosophy for mutual gain.

    So what does a “smart app” look like?

    Well consider today’s customer experience. You run an app and it is a one size fits all experience i.e. the app behaves exactly the same way for every one of its users, regardless of who they are, and how they are using it. Imagine a “smart” app that could customise the user experience based on intelligent, real time, information delivered from the Mobile Operator.

    Examples of a Mobile Operators unique enhancements to the customer experience could include:

    • On the fly customisation of the App UI based on a detailed understanding of the device currently being used. Remember that increasing numbers of customers are SIM swapping. How do you know that a customer using your service on a Monday via an iPhone is now using your service on a Tuesday using the same SIM in a 3G dongle connected to a Netbook?
    • On the fly customisation of content richness based on knowledge of the users  current connection speed (e.g. 2.5g, 3G, WiFi). For example trying to force rich video content to a customer on a slower 2.5G data connection will probably deliver such a poor customer experience they will never use your app again. If you know in real time their connection speed, you can deliver the most appropriate experience.
    • Personalisation of content and configuration of your App UI based on user demographics (gender, age, location, social economic profile, etc)
    • Targeting & profiling of the audience based on segmentation information e.g. travel profile (stationary, commuter, jet-setter), spend segment (>€100 per month, €50-100 per month, €30-50, etc.
    • Micro billing to the customer’s mobile bill or debits from their pre pay balance at VISA like transactions rates.
    • In App interactivity via messaging or calling
    • Up selling the customer from a basic service to a premium guaranteed service (for example low ping rate for multiplayer gaming apps).
    • Then for the owner of the App, post usage analytics providing data like who, where, how long their users are consuming their services, and other customers of the Mobile Operator that match their current users profile, who could be targeted by a marketing campaign.

    Examples of the enablers that Mobile Operators could deploy include; quality of service, billing, handset information, customer analytics, network traffic analytics, messaging, call management, location, age verification, tariff information. The list can go on and on, and in fact in our own planning sessions we have identified over 50 potential enablers.

    This is a more intelligent way of developing not only the App, but also the business opportunity. Via the Network Operators turning their network infrastructure and assets into a plug and play platform, Mobile Operators become vital in the creation process of the second wave of ‘intelligent’ apps that can deliver far richer experiences for users which will drive adoption, longevity, and profitability.

    Evangelisation and education on the benefits of creating “smart” Apps is crucial – this won’t just happen by itself. We are at the start of the process, and many companies are only now trying to get to grips with their App 1.0 strategy.

    To ensure Mobile Operators both identify and capitalise on the opportunity to become relevant in the App ecosystem, it is vital they adopt an open and transparent approach. Therefore there cannot be enough effort to bring together the various players in the App ecosystem to share thinking, create strategy and influence product roadmaps, and marketing plans.

    A great example of this is the Mobile Entertainment Forums Smart Enabler Initiative. I’d strongly recommend you check it out and get involved.

    Critically the experiences and enablers I have described here are not commercial reality today. Talking and listening to developers will be essential to ensure that the Mobile Operators invest in the right technology enablers and introduce compelling business models to encourage their adoption.

    Of course enablers are just one piece of a complex App ecosystem. There are many other challenges that hinder unlocking the full commercial value of the market place, not least the fragmentation and choices available to developers at the handset Operating System level. However, our approach is the same: dialogue and insight.

    That is exactly why O2 Litmus has partnered with Vision Mobile to undertake the largest developer research to date. We’re encouraging all mobile developers to participate, and we look forward to sharing the results with you all.

    Have your say at visionmobile.com/developers.

    I’d welcome your thoughts on both this piece and some key questions it poses:

    • Have you used a Mobile Operator enabler? What was the experience like?
    • What enablers do you need to make your App “smart”?
    • How can we effectively spread this message?

     

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    Podcast Schedule and SXSW

    Thursday, March 11th, 2010

    Just a quick post to give you advance warning of our upcoming Podcasts. These are recorded live by Debi, so please listen in live and ask questions, or feel free to listen at your leisure to the recorded shows, here.

    17th March:  fonYou – winner of Mobile Premier Awards Audience Award and Innovate!100 Madrid, co-founder & CFO Clemens Rossberg who was the presenter at Innovate!

    24th March: From CTIA – All About Analytics – Bango, Admob, Percent Mobile, Motally and Flurry  (not all confirmed yet, but they will be)

    31st March:  Handset Manufacturer Developer Communities – Participants TBC

    Finally a heads up that our Event Feed has now switched to coverage of SXSW, so look no further for complete social media coverage of the event.

    Till next time…

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    Inaugural Podcast in the Can

    Friday, February 26th, 2010

    Having Debi on board is really starting to bear fruit.

    Hot on the heels of our great coverage of Mobile World Congress, we now have out our very first Podcast. Chris Shipley co-founder of Guidewire, joins Debi to discuss Innovate!100, how to participate, and Chris takes your questions.

    You can listen here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/telefonicadev

    With the transcript available here.

    The plan is for this to be a weekly show, both live and archived at BlogTalkRadio. Transcripts will be produced for all shows, including Spanish translation.

    I hope you enjoy the shows, and it goes without saying – let us know what you think.

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    Mobile Premier Awards 2010

    Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
    MPA 2010

    MPA 2010

    Apologies in advance that my wrap up of the event is not complete. A scheduling conflict unfortunately meant that I had to leave before the end of the formal agenda.

    I’m sure that the official round up of the event and publication of all the winners will be live on the MPA website soon, plus you can look for Twitter activity from the event on it’s two hash tags that seemed to be in most frequent use: #mpa and #mpa10 . The venue had no cellular coverage again this year hint hint Rudy ;-) so only the lucky few on WiFi were tweeting from the room.

    This wrap up is therefore in the bite sizes pieces that I would have tweeted if I was online at the time!

    Russell Buckley from AdMob and Rich Wong from Accel Partners gave the keynotes. I came in too late to do justice to Russell’s presentation, but Rich gave some important perspective, sprinkled with a little nostalgia. You can grab Rich’s slides here.

    Rich rightly pointed out that there has never been a more exciting time to be in the mobile space. Just 10 years ago there were no high speed mobile data networks, actually no real data networks of any note regardless of speed, and phones were only just coming out of the grey scale age with the first colour phones appearing in 2002. I then started a mini personal flashback to my days of launching MMS with O2 UK, and the awe that the arrive of the little Sony Ericsson T68 brought – colour screen, java, MMS, clip on camera – that little thing, quickly followed by the T68i, was a turning point for the industry.

    Rich then spoke about Smartphone growth driving new services and presenting a platform for innovative startup’s to really florish, saying that he believed the ingredients were now all there for a new Google or eBay sized company to emerge. Of course he rightly pointed out that geography is hugely important, and in emerging markets the feature phone and Nokia still dominate.

    Rich took the opportunity to play back the demise of the walled garden of the Mobile Operator portals, with mobile now following the trend we saw on fixed Internet – Google now being the number 1 mobile site for traffic.

    He then moved on to an interesting Alien vs Predator analogy to describe the hardware and O/S war in mobile over the past 10 years.

    Alien vs Predator #1: Nokia vs Microsoft

    Alien vs Predator #2: Nokia vs Asia (ref Sharp’s Voda Live devices)

    Alien vs Predator #3: Apple vs The Droids

    I guess the interesting there is the future relevance of Nokia.

    Finally Rich wrapped up with some pearls for start up’s (see his deck for the accurate playback), but the bullets were:

    1. Describe the problem statement clearly
    2. Team background and credibility
    3. Platform and distribution strategy
    4. Stay capital efficient
    5. Work with investors that have an in-depth understanding of your space

    We then moved on the MPA award in Entertainment which was won by Layar – congratulations.

    Next we moved onto the MPA in Innovation pitches.

    Wikitude was in the augmented reality space, like Layar, overlaying information onto your phones camera image. There was a brief mention of Augmented Reality Markup Language (ARML) which is being reviewed by the W3C. They had also won the NavTeq Global LBS Challenge.

    Spendino was from Mobile Monday Berlin and was focused on charitable donations via SMS, also providing the infrastructure and settlement for the charitable organisations in the back end.They said they had 100 organisations signed up.

    Continuing the humanitarian theme, Lifesaversnetwork was focused on disaster planning and tracking – a kind of personal aid if you get caught up in a natural, or other disaster, situation with practical advice and LBS tracking etc.

    Mobisiteglore was based on the insight that in emerging markets PC penetration is low, so this service allows people to build fully featured web and mobile sites directly from their phone. 50,000 sites have already been created.

    Mobile Acuity from Mobile Monday Edinburgh was a product recognition app, with retailers uploading images and data for their product. They claimed 90%+ accuracy on standard products, and also good results when identifying houses.

    TaxiPal was a complete mobile Taxi solution. Live booking which had a nice auction process where it seemed rival Taxi firms could make you offers to compete for your business. There was also integrated mapping to check your route wasn’t designed to ramp up your fare, and also more traditional local taxi firm listings if you just wanted a number.

    Finally, before I had to run, was AudioBoo from Mobile Monday London. Small 5 minute voice recordings which can be stored and sharing across social media sites.

    Apologies for the incompleteness of the write up, but hopefully this fragment is still useful for those that couldn’t make it to the event.

    Check out Mobile Entertainment’s excellent daily round up, of news coming out of MWC, and of course the brand new MWC coverage and content aggregation service provided by O2 Litmus, here.

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