WIPJam @ CTIA - Keep The Discussions Going!

Posted by Carlo on 06 April 2010   |   Tags:
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A big part of every WIPJam are the deep-dive discussion groups. In these, the main group breaks up for some small group discussion based around certain topics. Discussion leaders, with expertise and experience relevant to the topics, facilitate the talks, sharing their own experiences as well as drawing in those from other participants. Like every part of the Jam, they're built around community participation, not top-down lecturing or sales pitches. By bringing in everybody's knowledge and know-how, we're able to help each other grow and succeed.

Along those lines, we want to keep the great discussions started at our CTIA event going by posting some highlights from each one here, and giving attendees -- and the rest of the developer community -- the chance to comment and ask questions. We'll list the topic of each group, then based on notes from the discussion leaders, summarize some key questions, points and conclusions from each one. We hope they'll serve as a jumping-off point for further discussions and knowledge-sharing in the comment section, so fire away!

Discussion Group 1 - Merchandising Your Application

Leaders: Ben Jacobsen, MobSpot; Lisa Whelan, Socialize Mobile

Key Questions/Concerns:

  • - How can developers get visibility on app stores? How can we get to the top of recommended lists?
  • - How can we create virality in our app to make downloads grow?
  • - Brands don't get mobile.

Key Statements/Issues/Discussions:

  • - Optimize your apps for search, cross-promotion and both mobile and web.
  • - Advertise inside the app and cross channel -- SMS, web and mobile.
  • - Promote yourself inside yours and others’ apps.
  • - Align with popular brands.
  • - SMS ads are useful and powerful.
  • - Talk with users about your app's benefits, rather than its features.
  • - Use feedback mechanisms, analytics, get satisfaction, focus groups, surveys etc. to see what people like/dislike about your app and innovate accordingly.

Conclusions:

  • - Mobile marketing is just a new media for executing basic marketing and merchandising principles.
  • - Work with influencers.
  • - Talk to agencies and brands -- educate them.
  • - Make your app discoverable through SEO and social media, make it recommendable.
  • - Use the community to engage and evangelize to new users.

Discussion Group 2- Cross Platform Development

Leaders: Robert Virkus, Enough Software; Shivakumar Mathapathi, Application Software Inc.

Key Questions/Concerns:

  • - Web development/native development -- which is more popular?
  • - How do we solve fragmentation issues?
  • - How do we get developers to understand marketing issues?

Key Statements/Issues/Discussions:

  • - Current fragmentation situation: "pick your poison".
  • - Developers are looking forward to the various web-based technologies, including WAC initiatives.
  • - Fragmentation issues need to be addressed.

Conclusions:

  • - Widgets maybe an an answer, but differing security policies on different devices remain.
  • - Third-party porting frameworks offer a solution for some fragmentation problems.

Discussion Group 3 - Mobile Web Development

Leaders: Tony Hartley, MoSync; Steve Haney, The M Group

Key Questions/Concerns:

  • - Is HTML5 the solution to everything?
  • - How do we introduce web developers to mobile?
  • - How do we make money from widgets?
  • - When to use native vs. web-based apps.
  • - We need efficient signing.

Key Statements/Issues/Discussions:

  • - Mobile development environments were a step back from the web.
  • - Web standards offer so much to developers.

Conclusions:

  • - Web standards are good! However, there is stall a lack of consistency in mobile.
  • - Use the mobile web if the shoe fits, if you need more access to the mobile device, use a native app.
  • - A big benefit of web apps is that they can be developed quickly.

Discussion Group 4 - Social Networking! How to Really Connect with Customers

Leaders: Sean Thompson, GoSub60; Jennifer Byrne, Verizon Developer Community

Key Questions/Concerns:

  • - What are the social features people use?
  • - What are the bad parts of social integration?
  • - What are the developer benefits?

Key Statements/Issues/Discussions:

  • - Support for multiple OS is a big challenge.
  • - Integrating social networks into apps is very good, as it enhances stickiness, allows for instant feedback and the ability to respond, lets users utilize a common ID, and has value from a metrics and ad perspective.
  • - Popular social features among users are: location sharing, news sharing, messaging, finding out what's happening; apps like Yelp, Foursquare, Nimbuzz.
  • - Bad parts of social integration include: privacy concerns, location, spammy feed posts.

Conclusions:

  • - Developers should integrate social networks where it makes sense.
  • - Developing small-scale social networks may be possible for developers.
  • - For WAC: social network aggregation, location APIs and billing APIs would all be useful for developers.

Discussion Group 5 - Use Location to Make Your Mobile Apps Stand Out

Leaders: Laura Diaz, NAVTEQ Network for Developers; Jon Ziskind, Zoscomm

Key Questions/Concerns:

  • - Assessing location on featurephones vs. smartphones
  • - For location accuracy, how good is good enough?
  • - What's the value of map data as more and more solutions are free?
  • - How can we use location for identity management?
  • - How do we find out user expectations?

Key Statements/Issues/Discussions:

  • - Users need different precision in location for different use cases.
  • - Developers need to understand how to manage consumption (ie battery life vs. location pinging).

Conclusions:

  • - Location can add relevancy for any app.
  • - The future of location is predictive and ubiquitous.
  • - Developers will use the easiest mapping APIs available for any device.
  • - Location determination remains quite expensive.

Discussion Group 6 - Getting the most out of Feature Phones and Quick Messaging Devices

Leaders: Peter Ocampo, AT&T; Marc Bolh, Ascendo Inc.

Key Questions/Concerns:

  • - What's the demographic of the QMD purchaser?
  • - Is this demographic willing to pay for apps?
  • - Will their be suitable ad aggregators for another revenue stream?
  • - How do you bring apps for QMDs/featurephones to market?
  • - Fragmentation among devices/operators.

Key Statements/Issues/Discussions:

  • - Developers will need a compelling business case to migrate to a new channel.
  • - Users of QMDs will probably be less likely to pay for apps than smartphone users, but channel behavior will influence consumer behavior.
  • - How to price apps for this market, and how app stores/operators will market to it.

Conclusions:

  • - If operators want lots of quality apps for this market, they will need to provide a channel to reach it, and device consistency.
  • - This market will require a different app mix and pricing than smartphones to attract widescale adoption.
  • - Developers need a compelling reason to move away from smartphones.

Discussion Group 7 - The next Wave for Mobile Development: Emerging Devices

Leaders: Bob Duffy, Intel; Neeraj Choubey, Dell Mobile

Key Questions/Concerns:

  • - Hardware fragmentation, multiple form factors
  • - How will hardware evolve to support the tablet use case?
  • - Most development is framework driven, how will this apply to different device types?
  • - How will devices deal with being disconnected from the network?

Key Statements/Issues/Discussions:

  • - What would make users carry a laptop vs. a tablet?
  • - Cost of UI/UX - they need to be smarter. Can it be customized per device?

Conclusions:

  • - There's a lot of interest and immense opportunity with tablets.
  • - Hope to prevent device fragmentation.
  • - Need a UI customized for a larger screen size.