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Last week was WIP’s first foray into the world of IPTV as we participated at the IPTV World Forum event in London by hosting the developer track.

The highlight of the day was tour Mini Jam unpanel, looking at differences between the mobile apps space and the IPTV space. Our speakers on the panel:

• Csaba Garay, Gravity RD
• Andrew Gayter, Ioko
• Simon Hanna, Microsoft
• Xavier Bringue, Orange
• Russel Johns, Targetwire

My personal “aha” moments that day :

• All our unpanelists agreed on the crucial importance of recommendation in the IPTV space to navigate the mass of content (something appstore should definitely improve on) however comments by Gravity RD (a recommendation engine provider for IPTV),  comparing recommendation in the mobile space and IPTV demonstrated 2 usage patterns, one very personal (mobile) and one multi-personal (TV). No one talked about people registering the fact they’re watching TV together and doing agglomerated recommendation based on...

This weeks carnival is brought to us by Tamoggemon Content Network. As usual, there are many great blogs highlighted.  These include:  An App Store Analysis by Chetam Sharma, arjw pens a view to the future on Why Paypal on mobile devices may  replace Credit Cards, and a guest blogger on WIP Connector, Jennifer Byrne, discussing how Verizon is Investing in Developers.

Our guest blogger this week is Jennifer Byrne, Director of Business Development and Partner Management at Verizon Wireless.  Verizon Wireless is a sponsor of our WIPJam Day for Developers, taking place on March 22, 2010 at CTIA.   Jennifer is leading a discussion group on Monday afternoon at WIPJam.

Verizon - Investing in Developers

Verizon is a proud sponsor of WIPJam 2010 at CTIA, and is interested in investing in the resources and partnerships that help developers grow their business. That is why we are so happy to take this opportunity to announce that you can now expand your market and reach an even larger user base through our V CAST Apps store. That’s because V CAST Apps will soon be available on Android devices, our fastest-growing smartphone platform. It will provide an easy, streamlined experience for users to find and purchase apps across Android devices.

Starting March 22, you can submit your Android app concepts for approval through the Verizon Developer Community portal....

GetJar, one of the many app stores we track in the WIP App Store wiki, commissioned a really great report from well-known mobile analyst Chetan Sharma on the state of the mobile app market that’s a must read for anybody involved with mobile apps. It’s a free download, too, so there’s no excuse not to spend a few minutes with it.

Chetan says there were 7 billion apps downloaded in 2009, and he predicts this will boom to 50 billion downloads by 2012, including both paid and free apps. He says apps generated revenues of $4.1 billion from sales, advertising and virtual goods in 2009, and this will jump to $17.5 billion in 2012.

A few other choice bits in the comprehensive, 19-page report:
- More than a third of app downloads came from Asia, more than any other region.
- Paid apps are strongest in North America, with the continent generating more than half the global paid app revenues.
- Furthermore, the average paid app price in North America is $1.09, compared to just under 80 cents in...

Another great carnival is hosted this week by Mobyaffiliates.  There is lots of good reading including two posts of the week: the first by Terence Eden, Voicemail to SMS service, a detailed review and the second by Tomi Ahohen, who brings a challenging and alternative perspective to the Silicon Valley, iphone dominated view of the mobile world.   Also included is the WIP post by Maryann Iannitti from Intel; Intel Atom Developer Program. Intel is a Lead Sponsor of WIPJam taking place March 22 at CTIA.

We are pleased to introduce our guest blogger this week.  Maryann Iannitti is the Manager, Intel Developer & University Marketing at Intel.  Intel is a lead sponsor of our WIPJam Session coming up on March 22, 2010 at CTIA Wireless.

Meet the Intel Atom Developer Program team @ WIP JAM CTIA Wireless 2010

The Intel Atom developer program has been designed to provide you with everything you need to develop and sell netbook applications. So, the question I get most often from developers is why netbooks? The netbook market is growing fast at 35 million in 2009 to 139 million in 2013*. Now more than ever, there is a rising demand for applications that have been designed for the netbook form factor and for the mobile, on the go audience. This new program is designed to address this very challenge and to provide you with the support you need to build and sell these applications. The program also provides OEMs and the ecosystem a framework to deliver great new applications directly to...

How much do you really know about mobile users? Often times we base development or marketing decisions on gut feelings, anecdotal evidence or widely held common beliefs, but how many of those are misconceptions. We Love Mobile, a marketing agency in the UK, has got an interesting post up highlighting 10 of the most common mobile misconceptions. While it’s fairly UK-centric, it’s worth a read wherever you are in the world to get you thinking about whether all the things you think you know about your user base are actually true.

Carnival #214 from mobiThinking is jammed backed with great blog submissions this week.  Make sure to visit and check them out!  Here is just a small sampling of what you will find.  Are App developers getting a raw deal from App Stores?  What developers want and why by MSearchGroove’s Peggy Anne Salz considers how App Stores can provide a better service to developers, with a feedback mechanism, more say in how apps are marketed etc. This week at Communities Dominate Brands, Tomi Ahonen turns his attention to data and how much more mobile phones tell marketers about consumers than any other media. The interrelationship between mobile advertising and mobile payments is the subject of Raj Singh’s blog as he ponders cloud-based payment systems (such as PayPal), payment details on the device or the possibility that paid-for content providers, such as Apple’s iTunes, might want to become the next mobile wallet.

I’m officially declaring 2010 as the Year of the Mobile Developer!  I’m not the first to do so, but wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment so I wanted to put WIP’s weight behind it.  It’s not that developers weren’t recognized before in the mobile sector; but it’s truly the first year that developers have been embraced and respected as key members of the mobile ecosystem.  I hope it’s also the year that developers can take a more collective stand and give direct feedback to the bigger companies; and WIP wants to coordinate that effort.

The proof of the Year of the Mobile Developer is extensive in our key industry events.  CES had a good showing of developers this year with a variety of activities starting with AT&T’s Developer Summit starting off the week;  Mobile World Congress (MWC)pulled out all the stops with the new App Planet Hall full of exhibits, dev conferences and complementary passes to developers; and the upcoming CTIA Wireless  has its own version with App World, full...

At MWC, NAVTEQ launched their new Smart™ APIs and made them available in beta, starting with the iPhone. Intrigued by the “Smart” term we asked them what it was all about.

So there are five core APIs in this version of NAVTEQ Smart APIs for Mobile: Mapping, Routing, Advertising, Search and Feedback APIs. These APIs “give you easy access to the world’s strongest map, traffic, and location content, advanced features like traffic-enabled routing” and will “allow you to customize your apps, brand your apps, and better monetize your apps.”

“Some early chats with iPhone developers, tell us that the experience in “Xcode is good and APIs are easy to use” (let us know if you have any thoughts on that). Obviously you better judge for yourself and download them along with technical documentation, tutorials, sample source code, etc at www.nn4d.com/smartapis. You’ll find all you expect from Smart APIs… optimized for mobile, offering new advanced map tiling technology, thin client...