The World’s Largest App Store

Yesterday PocketGear announced their acquisition of Handango with a bold claim to being the world’s largest app store. With 140,000 apps, covering 2,000 devices and downloaders from 175 countries, they may very well be right, only GetJar comes close in cross-platform.

As GSMA members in the Wholesale Application Community have realised, addressing the mass market, device fragmentation demands app store consolidation. They’re a bit late coming to this party. In my view, the Operator On-Deck app store has about as much chance of success as the Operator On-Deck Internet Portal.

Congratulations PocketGear!

Testing Times

Via Tomi Ahonen I discovered Mark Suster’s post App Is Crap. Mark argues that the app is a distraction from the main event in the browser. He’s right. The mobile web runtime environment could be delivering a whole lot more, and maybe it will with HTML5? Maybe it can already with Flash? When the network is fast enough and the device is truly open, the app will be dead. Until that time, it will be a closely guarded revenue generator in the value chain.

Just last week I received an email from the Symbian Foundation advising that the Symbian Signed certification process is moving in-house, Third Party Approvals are no longer permitted. Symbian will be charging €120 a pop for signing approval, until now Test Houses such as NSTL, Mphasis and Sogeti, have priced out from €200 per app. Bravo to Symbian for realising a revenue stream, Apple should have made a tiered developer scheme with chargeable fast-track approvals available a long time ago, but this really does not sit well with the Foundation’s Open Source ethic. If the platform is Open, I should be able to pay any accredited expert to test my app and provide approvals based on published standards. Surely?

Nokia laid their cards on the table at MWC and without actually saying it, made it clear that in their view Symbian has some years to run, but the future is Meego. Sure, there is a lot of cool stuff coming for developers in Symbian^3, customers are going to love the fact that we can do more, but don’t palm us off on a nicer UI, better APIs and the illusion of Openess whilst maintaining a vested interest in the success of Nokia, the Ovi Store and Ovi’s own approval process.

Litigious words? Please don’t insult my intelligence by stating that the Symbian Foundation is culturally independent of Nokia, who else is making Symbian smartphones of note?  Soon there will be more than one hundred Android devices on market. Symbian needs all the help it can get, we’d like to give it but we’d also like to draw on a mercenary army of expert, experienced and independent testers to do so.

Image: Rohde & Schwarz

Who would pre-purchase an iPad?

How many people are buying an iPad this weekend? I have no idea, I’m not a gambling man. If you asked me to hazard a guess? Maybe not so many right now, but wait until a toddler picks one up.

OK, stop laughing, seriously; if my son was still four years old, I would buy him one. The iPad looks kid-proof, no moving parts, no camera, hey, not much of a battery charge, what could possibly go wrong? Like the OS, net access is easily controlled.

The iPhone isn’t something you can give a child to play with, it’s mummy or daddy’s phone. An iPad will keep the little blighters occupied for hours without being an inconvenience when you want to communicate. When they’re asleep, you can use it to read a book, watch a movie, play music, catch up on your mail, browse a newspaper or flick through a magazine. You’ll pick it up as easily as you put it down.

The iPad has all the makings of yet another connected device middling-income folk wouldn’t want to be seen without. If you’re a harrassed parent, the price is something you’ll just put on the credit card.

Image Babesta

Monetising Mobile Apps: Shazam’s Coverage means Conversions

Speaking at MIDMEM, Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher stated that his ‘name that tune?’ app generates some 300,000 track purchases every day. From song tagging, he estimated a 13% conversion rate. That’s quite impressive, even off the back of 50m downloads.

Attributing the success of the app Fisher recognised the value of covering all mobile platforms, not just those most popular in the press. I completely agree, commercial app developers should be embracing device and OS fragmentation, not choosing sides.

We live in a world with some 2,000 different global name brand legacy and new model mobiles, if you’re serious, it’s not hard to keep them covered.

via musically

Opera acquires AdMarvel

Here we go, Opera comes out fighting ahead of MWC and buys up mobile advertising management AdMarvel. Opera CEO, Lars Boilesen says:

“In our fast-growing industry, mobile advertising represents an interesting long-term revenue opportunity. Every month, nearly 50 million people access the Web using Opera on their mobile phones and together with AdMarvel, we think we can play an important role in the evolution of mobile advertising,”

Riding on the back of positive reviews for Opera Mini 5, Opera Mobile 10 and the recent mass exodus from IE, things are looking up for Opera.

Bottom line: would I pay Opera to manage my mobile ads? Yes, I would, as they have proved yet again, they know and understand mobile.

Google Nexus One Customer Service Train Wreck

Would you like some cream with your schadenfraude pie? Hoof on over to the Google Mobile Help Forum and have a quick read through the Nexus One pages.

It would seem as though the likely-to-know-everything-about-you-lads forgot perhaps the most important thing in shipping the Production 1 Nexus One ’superphone.’ Customer Service. Whilst every other manufacturer can get away with debugging P1 in the marketplace, they do have the benefit of operational support systems, both their own and those of their Operator customer’s.

Google has gone live on a rushed hardware release with only a forum and an email address for customer support. They are promising a response within 48 hours. Well, you live and learn. I am sure they will throw a lot of money at this and recover.

Perhaps the Internet is being unkind and Google are victims of their own success? To a certain extent, maybe that’s true but you don’t need to go to MIT or Stanford to understand the importance of Customer Service. No, you just need a dash of common sense and a soupçon of humility.

Image: McCord Museum

…and a Happy New Year

If a somewhat belated one.

A little busy last week closing down the latest release of the MO-Call app for PC (and very soon, Mac), taking on new developers and pushing through some great new features (bookmark Rich and Peter’s MO-Call blog to make sure you don’t miss out on our new releases).

Here in Beijing, as in the UK, we’ve had a record snowfall and apparently there is more on the way. Unlike the UK, public services are still working…and so are we.

Merry Christmas from Morodo

The Morodo team wishes you all a very Merry Christmas.

It’s the time of year when, traditionally, we over-indulge a little. In the event of any accidents or mishaps, you might find this advice from the Wired How To Wiki, how to save a wet mobile phone, rather handy.

There’s no rest for the wicked: we’ll be working throughout the festive season, online and available as and when you need us.

Remember, if you can’t be with them, MO-Call them.

More Mobile and Internet predictions for 2010

ReadWriteWeb has posted the readership’s top ten products of 2009. No major suprises here, in the USA, everyone is Twittering, Googling and on Hulu; if I make one prediction for 2010, it’s that Android will enjoy a comfortable position in this top ten next Christmas.

On the subject of predictions, Dean Bubley’s predictions for 2010 are not only insightful but also a joy to read. As he suggests, from now on, I will be referring to Mobile Networks as Happy Pipes instead of Dumb Pipes.

My own occupational language overuse bête noire is the term ecosystem ascribed to, variously, Operating Systems, App Stores and Development Environments.