Sticky or Spready and other hot mobile developer topics from CTIA

Posted by Teresa on 01 November 2009 - 0 Comments Categories :

Sticky or Spready? Which would you choose? That was the premise for our hot UnPanel on mobile analytics at the WIPJam session at CTIA in San Diego on October 8, 2009.

The winner? Sticky, which measures the user engagement and satisfaction with a mobile application, was chosen by all three UnPanelists – Sean Galligan of Flurry, Jeff Wender of Nielsen and Mark Donovan of ComScore. My co-facilitator Seamus McAteer of Majestic Research agreed. The reason being you want an application to stick, for someone to want it, use it, and more importantly – pay for it!

Now that's not to say that being spready (hey, it was a Jam session) or viral isn't important. And a viral campaign is certainly needed to spread the word in a mobile marketplace that is getting increasingly noisy. But app developers need to first develop an application to meet a market demand (not a new story, but one worth repeating!)

The next question then was – how do you measure the sticky or spready success of your application? The UnPanelists and Jammers offered a number of market level and 'in-app' metrics as follows:

Market Level Metrics which tend to be more costly to track down include:

• Audience size
• Types of phones
• Demographics
• Preferences

In-App Metrics to track include:

• Revenue tracking
• Comparative value
• Volume
• Technology
• Customer features such as page views, event tracking and navigation.
• Usage metrics such as:User
  Sessions
  Session length
  Frequency
  Retention
  Geography

What did we miss? – add your comments.There was also some discussion from some of the big companies about providing some info to WIP to share with developers….. Apply some pressure so it happens – keep asking them for it!

Cross media analytics are when both market level and in-app metrics are used together.

Flurry is becoming a key player in this space offering the first free, cross-platform service to provide developers with detailed analytics about how, when, where and by whom their mobile applications are being used. Their customers are getting great insight into how customers are using their applications – often in ways never expected. Flurry recently announced a partnership with T-Mobile USA who is offering the Flurry analytics tool to their developers (another WIPJam introduction!)

In other exciting news from CTIA – congratulations to HipVoice, with their push-to-talk software solution, who were winners of the AT&T Fast Pitch Platinum Awards in the Enterprise category. Check out the great video of the awards here. When we met Darius Gandhi of HipVoice (see photo) at our WIPJam session at CTIA in Las Vegas earlier this year, we knew he and his company were winners so we did what we had to do. We introduced HipVoice to Ed Schmidt from AT&T Dev Central and also got Darius to lead a Discussion Session at WIPJam!

The last interesting tidbit from WIPJam came during our opening UnPanel on Going Global, with a comment by Tim Chang of Norwest Ventures partners who let us know that VCs aren't interested in companies whose sole revenue model is based on mobile advertising, the reach just isn't there yet.

To all our UnPanelists, Discussion Leaders and YOU our attendees – thanks for Jam'n with WIP.

And thanks to our great sponsors: Qualcomm, Sony Ericsson, BlackBerry, AT&T Dev Central, Eclipse-Pulsar, Mobile Socery and Forum Nokia.

Here are a few more photos:

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The NAVTEQ LBS Challenge is OPEN

Posted by imbschlank on 31 October 2009 - 0 Comments Categories :

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.

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Carnival of Mobilists #197

Posted by imbschlank on 28 October 2009 - 2 Comments Categories : Events •

The Tamoggemon Content team treats us to an assortment of posts with a special emphasis on mobile marketing, mobile infrastructure and a welcome progress report on the WikiMobilePedia. It includes an article by mjelly entitled iphone appstore SEO – 12 ways to improve your iphone app ranking. A good read for all who are or will be selling applications on a carrier or device manufacturer store.

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No ppt but loads of ties and panels at ITU

Posted by ThibautR on 22 October 2009 - 6 Comments Categories : Community •

Came back from Geneva where I was 2 weeks ago for ITU Telecom World! And haven't had found to finish this blog… but here it is now! In a self admitted mixed bag of thoughts and things seen.

For those of you who cannot remember ITU Telecom World, it used to be the craziest / biggest / unmissable event in the telecom space! Well of course it was in 1999, we were all going to be wheeling in our personal optical cable behind us to get our necessary 100M/s dose of "bits"… Now we know better and have realized that carrying a mobile phone is much better than carrying a cable wheel… So the show had to rethink about itself… So the ITU Telecom World now concentrates a lot more on mobile than it has done before moving away from its fixed roots (can one have mobile roots ).

So it's all mobile.. It's all about cybersecurity… It's all about about governance and standards… it's all about ICT being a key driver for overall economic development especially in times of recession… It's all about the next 1 Billion users and the deployment of mobile in developing countries… And… a lot of suits, lots of ties and lots of government representatives. (I even had to put a tie on to participate to a videoed Telecom TV debate on the subject on "Show me the Money" available here)

A different crowd then different discussions for sure but still mobile application and services development was at the center of many discussions, as the mobile phone becomes a quasi universal information, communication and computing device. So a lot of attention and demand for application and content providers which was also reflected in the official theme of the conference "open innovation" or more exactly "Open networks, connected minds". Developers and content providers were praised by all as being the future of the telecom industry and critical to further economic development either through eHealth, sensors, mobile banking. Unfortunately examples of activities, exchanges, lessons learned in the field of open innovation were rather spurious.

WIP on the invitation of NGMN organized a panel to bring in those very practical examples: our objective being to cover the various aspects of "open innovation" with the developer community and how to deliver on this innovation in a sustainable way (scoring high at the ITU buzzword bingo here). Or in more down to earth terms "how can operators, OEMs and all platform providers work more collaboratively with developers rewarding risk taking more appropriately and facilitating decision making for developreneurs". A great panel then covering a wide range of subjects from open source, to appstore, to end-user analytics sharing, to the importance of mobile to redefine customer relationships, to the increased importance of making mobile data available on the cloud. The panel available for NGMN members here , thanks a lot to the panelists :

• Joe Barrett, Qualcomm
• Emiliano Ceraldi, Telecom Italia
• Jérôme Lepeu, Mobile Distillery
• Dr Toshitaka Tsuda, Fujitsu Laboratories
• Mike Yonker, Nielsen Mobile

And for those of you interested in the geeky stuff on the show floor, they were sparse but here are a few cool things spotted:

• The Docomo booth was rather impressive with 2 prominent demos of Augmented reality both given on HTC Android phones. (not so surprising when you see popularity of Layar in Japan)..With a couple of Blackberry's added to their product lineups this made for a not so usual Docomo booth.
• Augmented reality was hot among developers with a few more companies demonstrating their solutions. One that caught my eye was a demo by KDDI, because .. it was running on a mid-tier Brew device, basically stating that embarking the correct hardware on mid-tier phone could open a much wider market for Augmented Reality.
• The OPhone and Mobile Market were massive on China Mobile's booth. I could finally make a mental and real pictures of the OPhone OS and Developer Network as well as the whole collection of OPhones from 5 different manufacturers showing the impetus behind the platform. So mental picture is:

OPhone OS = a variant of Android, -2 hardware buttons, + China Mobile APIs and improved navigation + JIL widgets + Chinese character hand writing

Looking forward for your views on the mental pictures… In the mean time here are the physical pictures:

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Carnival of Mobilists #196

Posted by imbschlank on 19 October 2009 - 0 Comments Categories : Offering •

Host Improbulus at A Consuming Experience guides us through this week's works by top mobile bloggers, with features about handsets, learning and lucre. Frequent WIPJam participant and discussion leader, Franciso Kattan, has 7 recommendations for developers on How to Merchandise Your App 2 Years Ai (after the iPhone), following CTIA, summarising key lessons for developers wanting to go mobile.

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Carnival of Mobilists #195

Posted by imbschlank on 12 October 2009 - 0 Comments Categories : Offering •

Following plenty of action at CTIA, Carnival #195 is at Always On Real-Time Access AORTA, where host Chetan Sharma describes the past week's mobile blogging as an eclectic mix of viewpoints. Check out Andrew Grill of London Calling's post where he delves into the world of mobile and social networking. He looks at taking social media mobile and how the growth in social networks will drive mobile internet usage.

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Carnival of Mobilists #194

Posted by imbschlank on 07 October 2009 - 0 Comments Categories : Offering •

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!

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----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Touchwiz URL: http://www.samsungtouchwiz.nl EMAIL: touchwizard@email.com IP: 24.132.75.31 DATE: 10/16/2009 05:38:56 AM

Is the idea behind these postst that each time a blogger comments on one of his favorite links? Even though I am not too familiar with the developer scene I did see some well known names like Qualcomm which provided the processort for among other the Samsung Omnia? However the link that is about Blacberry and the bakery does not seem to work.

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The Future of the Mobile Development Industry; perspective from Sony Ericsson

Posted by imbschlank on 04 October 2009 - 0 Comments Categories : Offering •

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!

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