Tech IT Easy » mobile

Three (4) reasons why you should be developing games, not apps, for the iPhone

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:10:22 +0000

With both the launch of the app-store and the “global” (western) release of an affordable iPhone 3G, it is clear that the rules of the game are changing a little as far as adoptability of software is concerned. While, if you hang around the blogosphere, you’re exposed to a tech-crowd in a tech-world, many of which are anglophiles also, this is no longer so when you’re dealing with a consumer-targetted electronic device, like the iPhone, available in many countries, in all the major stores, and at a fairly appealing price & cool-factor.

No, instead you’ll be dealing with customers from countries like Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc. many of which prefer to think in their own language. And you’ll be dealing with mainstream users of telephones, who are, let’s face it, often of a younger generation.

So the implication is: how do I, as an app-developer, reach out to both a global, non-english audience? And how do I appeal to the typical demographic (age, income, etc.) that will buy this phone?

The answer seems fairly straightforward: Games !

Games have the advantage that they can easily bridge the language-gap, by mostly focussing on visual communication.
Games appeal to the younger crowd.
And, let’s face it, the iPhone is not (yet) a business-phone, and hence again not aimed at the typical blog-reader & app-user.

Addendum: a possible fourth reason is that I’m personally not so impressed with the iPhone/iTouch keyboard; i.e. I won’t be writing a blogpost on it any time soon. Games are another matter.

So, if you ask me, all you people aiming to create or invest in the next “productivity” app, I would think again and focus on what the lowest common denominator is between your skills and demand.

Inspiration for this quick post: Fred Wilson on the iPhone app-ecosystem.

Vincent

P.S. don’t forget to check out some of the smart comments this post is receiving.

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Why we pay when we Call?

Georgia Psyllidou — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:57:16 +0000

Everymonth same question : Why shall I pay this horrible mobile bill?

Reflex-logic tells me it’s because there is my name on it, I am the person who did all these calls, who used all this bandwidth and all these services.

But what do I pay for?

When I place my calls I take the initiative of starting bipartial exchanges and if people I am calling (Hillary, Pico, Woody) don’t reply, I don’t pay.

If they accept my calls, then they confirm the fact that it is also a good initiative for them.In this case it is also a good initiative for my operator because I confirm the usefulness of the service that is provided to me. Well, for the operator of the receiver it sucks a bit, because during all this time I pay my operator, Pico cannot initiate any rewarding conversations for his operator. Which is another evil benefit for my operator, since I crunch competitors’ revenues.

So why do I have to pay for taking such a good initiative?

Well, this corrosive question was planted in my mind around ‘98 or ’99 or ‘97 (I don’t really remember) through eeea.gr, but at the time having a mobile phone was rather generating social value and competitive advantage over rigid fixed-line communicators so model was right. Plus I was too young too pay for anything and thus to ask questions on my business model and how it fits with my mobile operator’s one.

But now that I am surrounded by attention-driven models and staples are harder to find on a desk than cellphones, I find paying for calls I place simply obsolete and naive.

Obsolete because I am child of the attention-era. I am immersed in a world that the more buzz you create the more precious you are considered (name it web socializing or coffee-brake storytelling it is always business and if you want to calculate your ubiquous score just play with this socialbomb game). Under these criteria, buzz is more valuable than the business itself. So if I buzz I should get the business (the call) for free as a minimun reward.

Naïve, because charging only for duration is reducing the communications’ value chain

to a single parameter. Driving earth flat again.

And behavioral yield? Why not rewarding me for calling numbers I used to/could call from skype or fixed lines? For calling people I haven’t called for some time? For calling people that have a free line (because they work for an operator not because they have a corporate contract)? Why not penalizing me for ringing?

And geography?

My operator is totally indifferent if I use my mobile from my bathtub or from a train in Marseille.

And so on…

Most people that do dollarious bills, don’t go through their notices to verify them. We don’t have a personal registry to compare it to the one we receive from our operator. Only when it feels completely absurd we will go through the verification Golgotha. (when for example your operator decides that you have moved out of the country because you have a boyfriend in another country and therefore charges you with roaming prices for all local calls ! ..!!yes yes).

So billing should first create the feeling that it is fair. And complex models based on behavior are very good at this.

Marketing is very good to acquire new customers but we won’t stay loyal to something that it doesn’t feel right. Look at facebook, does it charge you for throwing sheep to people?

Well I only hope that my operator won’t begin intelligizing his billing by adding the parameter “ corrosive bigmouth”…

… end of story- I’d better prepare my “Why I love my operator xxx” article

… sweetness, sweetness I was only joking…

Georgia

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Auction 73 : Multi Play Multi Win

Georgia Psyllidou — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 04:20:25 +0000

Uf!

My faith has been restored: we live in a civilized business world where everybody can be a winner, sky is the limit etc.

More specifically, as far as the 700Mhz part of the sky is concerned, the breaking news are that there are no breaking news and no disruptive solutions:

Winners

US government has won

~ 20 billions of declining US $.

AT&T has won

the C-block and the pride of carriers being carriers.

AT&T’s lawyers have won

significant fees and gem experience from lawsuits concerning the Openness clause.

Google has won

the right to patch their apps on (carter)mobiles,
access to the mobile advertising market (~ 3 billions d.US $)
and saved ~ 5b.d.US $ to invest on their core business and on P&L communication (partnerships and lobbying)

Consumers have won

a stable thus fitter-happier-more productive market
having the actors empowered and doing their best to focus on client satisfaction with the cease of this corporate battle
a monetization of their mobile clicking
federal income

(others)

… you’re welcome to brainstorm.

Geometry: Symmetry and a 3D market that moves in balance.

The equilibrium of this auction is a piece of art.

The main financial flows are organized symmetrically, in analogy of size.

This is my oversimplified prism:

Big still pay the Big (B to B) : AT&T pays FCC
MicroPlayers AKA “consumers” pay attention that pays Google (MP to G)

The notorious interoperability in telecommunications could actually apply to business models as well , since each one has found its place in this multidimensional world.

As you can see above the 700 MHz space has been defined in 3D :

Little red axe: MP to G

Big red axe: B to B

The long red tail: their future interactions.

I commit to review my proposition to do away with auctions as sales procedures, taking off my hat to these infamous Google game theorists.

Hey guys, would you care to take a look into tougher games once you’ve finished with business peace?

Georgia

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The role of the internet for the retail of physical goods.

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:11:20 +0000

Hello there, Vincent here.

One of the stories, I covered last week in my links on my blog, uncovered an interesting statistic. Only about 3% of retail sales in the US happens online. I don’t think these stats are at all coincidental. While I see a bright future ahead for the online retail of media-products, I find that what the internet cannot provide is the “closeness,” that is sometimes needed for evaluating certain types of goods, like food and clothing. I have commented on this before, implicitly, with a post on the web as a third place, and about the lack of cohesion that Facebook provides.

At the same time, as The New Yorker story reports, what the internet has changed is how we shop; it is much easier to research and comparison-shop than it was before the internet-days. A survey by Accenture found that ca. 66% of those surveyed compared products online, and another study showed that the internet played a significant role with ca. 75% of electronics purchases.

IInnovate has an interesting podcast interview with Scott Dunlap, CEO of NearbyNow, which has come up with an interesting way to exploit the informational advantages of the internet and mash that with the qualities of physical shopping. Following short video shows how their service works:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FpKFYRKsY8]

Clearly technology has evolved a lot in the last few years, making this possible. NearbyNow works via the web and via mobile. I’m not sure if they are using any location-tracking & matching services, but certainly they are heading in that direction. On the retailers’ side, there is plenty of technology that makes this possible also. Electronic inventory and point of sale systems allow both for the checking of stock-levels and for consumers to reserve items to be picked up and tried on at a later date.

One issue that entered my mind, is that of efficiency. The way NearbyNow operates is through malls in the US, most of which are, as I found out, owned by 6 major companies across the nation. US’s scale-economies win again! In Europe, the situation appears a little different. Culturally, linguistically, technologically, and legally, it is a much more fragmented market, with far fewer malls also, and that may make it difficult for a unified service like this to operate as efficiently as it would in the US.

There is also the issue of too much transparency, which is worrying to some retailers, and addressed in the podcast-interview. But what does seem certain is that this is exactly the type of service that consumers value, and as such one that any consumer-centric business should encourage.

Will a service like this ever replace shopping in its entirety? No, I’m essentially betting my future that there are plenty of qualities *real* environments will continue to offer over virtual ones. But there is no reason, none at all, to try to integrate the good qualities that the web does possess—information at your fingertips—as elegantly and effectively as possible into those experiences.

This article is mirror-posted on my blog

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XML Stories

Georgia Psyllidou — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:05:09 +0000

hello hello

It’s a sunny sunday so I will share my idea rapidly and kick off to photosynthesize.

Techiteasy is a community blog so we tend to interact, ping pong ideas etc. Kari was sharing some thoughts about gaming experiences, Vincent some others on blogging about books and I was trying how to o’reillishly “Learn Japanese in 24 hours” to get a glance of some Japanese neo authors who write novels on mobile phones, using the rules and language of mobile communication.

Interaction is an effort to extend your actions to enter another domain, act and receive action. In Gaming you choose among a list of actions on a specific domain. When you blog about books you do exactly the same but with ideas in the place of actions.

These two forms of interaction are both quite:

Technically complicated (developing the book/game, mastering the actions/ideas, add your input).
Imprisoned in a specific domain. (Kari cannot play the books Vincent is blogging about even if he had Windows)

Rin from Kokura (a primitive greek way of naming people that are distant but important) removed some bricks from my thought wall. Mostly, in terms of her functional proposition. (24 hours haven’t lapsed yet to understand Japanese)

Writing books on your mobile, much resembles coding, you have to keep it simple and efficient.

A hidden catch is that you can probably make it extensible and platform-independed.

Result? If you extend the functional proposition, you can possibly write a mini novel that will be playable for other users on other media.

…and pass from gaming, to authoring, to blogging for both…

How to extend the functional proposition? Starting from basic technical standardization:

XML will-it be sufficient enough to create scenery taxonomies, character ontologies and plot relationships?

XAL Extensible Authoring Language, does it exist?

Throw me the apples

Georgia

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Shut down TV, to open up mobiles – the auction 73

Georgia Psyllidou — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:12:54 +0000

It’s over.

Analog US tellyvisions are being thrown away, liberating long-desired spectrum that calls for reallocation, today.

Chicken or egg, we need air, so let there be plans, people & co, actions and an auction to start with, auction 73 for the 700Mhz spectrum. Rounds last 10minutes to set an equilibrium position among the different degrees on openness of the mobile industry. Tough.

The auction house is the Federal Communications Commission and the most desired item on the catalogue is the “C Block”, a fine 22Mhz segment assorted with the capacity of enabling deployment of national scale projects to its collectors: nationals and locals, operators and WISPs, new business people, some opportunists and an artist (Office of Spectral Ecology)

The majority of big Mobile Network Operators (aka MNOs) have shown up only to be shown the door out during the prequalification phase, in a sort of witty joke or creative telco analysis challenge.

As today was approaching, no more jokes, FCC doubled the panel of qualified bidders to reach 214, re-including the MNOs, who can reconsider themselves as “home”. (AllTel, AT&T Mobility Spectrum, Chevron, Qualcomm, Verizon Wireless)

On the “guests” side I was delighted to find the haute couture of creative business modelists. (Google, Spectrum, LLC/ Bend Cable Communications and other Sillicon Valley based companies)

buzz abouts

If you hate theories and concepts skip next paragraph and just suppose the iPhone being created by Banana Ltd instead of Apple. And then imagine it, because you couldn’t be holding it right now: AT&T or Orange don’t partner with Bananas, they milkshake and invite Banana’s to participate. The fuzz is Bananas laying on the street to claim their right to please consumers (ideally).

Next Paragraph

buzz abouts

Apparently “homes” seek simply to preserve their status: their prescription power over mobile phone manufacturers, over content management, their regulatory influence…

On the other hand, runner-ups are challenged to prove that they can enter the supply chain and change it, having pretty good chances to do so: they have already marked a point, with Google resisting AT&T’s bullying ( !!“put up or shut up” !!) and lobbying the way into:

Open devices: through the “Wireless Carterphone” condition, which stops bullying against manufacturers.
Open services: through non discriminatory wholesale network access conditions

So the Googlephone might be on his way! (hurray!) along with long desired network neutrality, openness, disconcentration, innovation and regulatory repositioning. In simple words when mobile networks are neutral and open to all technologic standards and functionalities, ideas can find their way easily, and parental controls have less role to play. Tim Wu explains so well the environment of neutral networks in “Wireless Carterphone” that he even bothers to post a real picture from the 60’s version, along with his excellent insights.

Flip TI

I want to flip it: using my mobile I want to talk for peanuts, to access any site on internet, command my computer, camera and coffee machine and do whatever engineers are amused implementing to amuse me. As a professional I want the evolution mechanism to function again, cleaning up the confused telcos environment. It feels strange to complain about traffic on my way to work and when I am there just smile awkwardly in front of bottlenecks that squize ideas, and set up useless and expensive jobs.

I search no solution, it seems that exists already in network neutrality but until now our problem in the mobile industry was ignored and thus not treated. On predictions I am sure you have some great ideas to share, please do…

What intrigues me and made me torture you with this auction is NOW,

what is happening and HOW it is happening.

Method: Let me first express some sympathy for the “guests” as they have to play in a tough procedure that mostly reflects the MNOs structure. The Auction Method (73) puts utmost pressure on buyers, forces them give up any sense of negotiation, pumps up prices and favors existing capital value over project potential value.

Principles: Price should not be the only criterion, it could be rude (and silly) to ignore deployment projects and profitability potential.

Timing: Since the long-term objective is market stabilization and consumer centric profitability these values could apply early. Sooner or later consumers will finally decide if they like MNOs choosing content for them or they’d rather put up with libertine spam while producing and distributing their own.

So how could it be sooner? How can we implicate this market feedback on this starting point? How a weighted voting system could apply? Can we group people that compose the market by expertise, consumerism, technology awareness, implication will and make a mature decision on airwaves ?

And funding? Come on, it’s simple, funding could be tailored to winner’s logic and the associated business model:

If it is for MNO’s the supply chain can stay as is: Winner pays now and consumers pay later.

If it is for alternatives, funding gets creative as well: Consumers can be taxed now and being rewarded later with free/gratos/tzamba mobile products, funded by advertising and paraphernalia the other way up.

Fair enough?

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Why iPhone won’t matter in Europe

Kari Silvennoinen — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:50:23 +0000

Many Apple fans are salivating over the rumored launch of Apple’s long-awaited mobile device in Europe. These fans (who put ”fan” in ”fanatic”) are reading the American echo-chamber-blogs and are certain that Apple will not only introduce iPhone in Europe this year, but it will be also revolutionary. As a card-carrying Nokialand citizen who, though, has never owned a Nokia, I disagree.

Telecom operators are far more heterogeneous in Europe and prices vary wildly in each country. Recently EU tried to limit the roaming charges, which is positive development. In USA, Apple went with exclusive deal with an operator so it can control the experience. In Europe, this will be so much difficult. Will Apple discard its main core skill, the user experience, so it can sell its device all around Europe? Or does the user experience mean so much to Apple, that they’re willing to concentrate on just the important markets? I’m betting the latter will happen.

I have to admit that my guess is based on the assumption that Apple launches the phone in Europe on a single carrier. This probably means that iPhone will not be available in all European countries at first. My guess is UK, Germany and France. I’ve very limited knowledge of operators in these markets, but my guess is that there are some big players in all of these fighting over the exclusive deal over iPhone. Other markets will see iPhone later, through subscriptions or after Apple starts to sell iPhone without subscription in whole Europe. But for this to happen, Apple needs to find a way to bring down the price, at around 800-900 euros, it is way too expensive. Compare this to iPods and Macs, which have gained lot of adoption when they entered the price ranges of their competitors.

And then there’s 3G. Telecom operators mis-invested in 3G en masse during the dot-com boom and it’s not widely adopted, but the fact remains that the infrastructure is there and the telecom operators are desperately seeking killer apps for it. Yes, 3G eats your handset battery like nothing else. Yes, the data charges are insanely priced pretty much everywhere. Yes, pretty much everyone has broadband at home these days.

But these are just technicalities. The mobile phone culture is different here and differs widely across countries.

The main reason it won’t matter is… we just don’t care about smart phones. Or what goes as a smart phone on the other side of the pond, as according to some statistics, about a quarter of phones in European hands have the multimedia capabilities. That’s a lot. Go to any European store and try to find a model without camera, music player or internet (3G or EDGE or what they now have). I won’t mention other features like calendars, ring tones, games and such, as they’re are even in the cheapest models already. This is 2007, after all.

The European handset manufacturers made a grave mistake couple of years ago in 2004, when they presumed people were into feature-filled bricks and cheap “clam-shell” phones from Motorola and Samsung came and conquered lot of market ground. After a quick shuffle, both SonyEricsson and Nokia quickly reintroduced cheap models to their offerings. Even Nokia was forced to launch their first clam-shell model. Now, Motorola and Samsung are going for “thin” models and at least SonyEricsson is answering that challenge. Nokia’s answer to these “slim” phones is expected during fall, but the company is know for missing deadlines.

Nokia on the other hand is betting on its N-series line. These are, according to Nokia, what computers have become. Nokia N95 is formidable opponent to iPhone in Europe. On a spec sheet, it has pretty much all the features of the iPhone and is better in some fronts. Naturally, the UI isn’t slick and it doesn’t have the future technology iPhone has.

In Europe the people going for other Apple’s forte, style, might not be throwing their Samsung Ultras, Nokia N-series or SE Walkmans out of the window. They are so much cheaper and get the jobs done and look good. On the other front, technical advances, the likes of N95 is dominating the field with its geek appeal (3G and WLAN, GPS, runs on third-party-welcoming Symbian). And for the enterprise, I don’t see anyone challenging Nokia’s Communicator (and now E-series) foothold. In Finland, the Nokia Communicator (which I think totally sucks not only as a device but as an user experience) is as ubiquitous among business people as iPods are among urban people.

Yes, there will be buzz. Yes, in many ways, it will be a success. But, will iPhone matter in Europe? Probably not. It will have its niche and I hope it challenges other players in the market to improve their user interfaces, but that’s about it.

Better question is, I think, does Apple care? I got the impression that Steve Jobs would of course love to sell as many of these things as possible, but he’s not counting on it to penetrate the market, going so far as using one of the common start-up lies, “we only need 1% of the market”. The device seems to have an audience, but the features might not be so revolutionary to us Europeans that we’d invest in it. It would be a lie to say that Apple is not out to capture the markets it enters, as that’s what corporations do by definition, but it has shown that it can survive as a niche player in computer markets. It’s not Microsoft and it’s not Dell. Using their tactics, Apple probably would have larger market-share, but the costs of doing so might be not worth it (goodwill, community, brand). With iPods, they had tremendous luck (and skill) and could dominate the market without sacrificing their values. I’m afraid many Apple fans believe that with iPhone, Apple has been able to combine the the different market advantages it has in Macs and iPods. This is wishful thinking and I don’t believe that. The fact remains that computers, portable music players and phones are all different markets. Both Nokia and Apple would like us to believe in this trio’s convergence. Their devices, after all, are “what computers have become”.

Kari has always depended on the last year’s models of SonyEricsson. Now he has a SE K610i with Opera Mini installed. Even it will kick iPhone’s ass in Europe.

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Tech IT Easy » mobile

Three (4) reasons why you should be developing games, not apps, for the iPhone

Why we pay when we Call?

Auction 73 : Multi Play Multi Win

The role of the internet for the retail of *physical* goods.

XML Stories

Shut down TV, to open up mobiles – the auction 73

Why iPhone won’t matter in Europe

The role of the internet for the retail of physical goods.