My Mobile World Congress

Last week I was at Mobile World Congress presenting Rummble application at Tele Atlas booth. We were very happy to win First Prize Innovation contest and the experience was totally positive.
Neighbourhood was one of the new features we included on iPhone app that got more attention, basically it shows you places nearby split in 4 cardinal points, so you can decide which direction is more interesting to discover.
Thanks to Tele Atlas for such a great event organization, and as we are talking about neighbourhood I'd like to thank to the companies were my neighboring Nulaz and AvMap that made the event more pleasant.

Rummble for iPhone - Neighbourhood view from Rummble on Vimeo.

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Mobile applications and services are about native applications

We are living a great moment in the mobile industry, stores and the fact that anybody can publish and distribute mobile software will change the way industry moves.

Free and lite words are gonna replace to the old "premium" one, advertisement (even still not clear that returns profits) will be present in lot of applications as a way to monetize them.
The market is more fragmented than ever, lot of different platforms for native applications; widgets, wap, web pages adapted for different browsers for mobile web applications.

Having a look to the big picture, what's the starting point to create a successful mobile application or service?

The success of a mobile application or service depends directly of the product itself (design, usability, quality code of the software), the distribution channels and the promotion.
Let's leave promotion and focus in product and distribution as they have an special and interesting relation:

Product will limit your distribution.
Distribution will define your product.

Thinking in a worldwide product strategy we have to choose between 2 main options when defining our mobile product:

Mobile Web based (web, wap, widgets...)
Native Application based (J2ME, iPhone, Android...)

It is important not to think that web applications or widgets will require a lower budget, that's not true, web applications also suffer fragmentation and development times are very similar, with the benefit that native applications offer an usability and look and feel that web applications can't offer.

Once we decide the platform, how does our choice affects the posterior product distribution?

Let's have a look to the channels available for native applications:

Operator
Best way to distribute your product to the mass market, operators have the user base, they know demographics and user preferences.

Store
An excellent bet, it's a growing trend. Nokia, Apple Store, Google Market, GetJar, O2 Litmus, Samsung... are offering native applications through their stores, for free so far but I'm pretty sure they will implement a billing system very soon.

Embedded applications
Great way to make your application accessible.

And the channels available for Web based applications and services are:

Operator
Mentioned previously, they would include a link to your mobile web service in their portal.
www
Promote your mobile application or service through a web page.

Then, what makes native application a better choice ?

Technically speaking there are a few reasons, native applications are faster, powerful, offer a better user experience and are not browser dependent....

If your application is a success you'll have to think in maintenance, port to new devices, test it... soon or later you'll need a business model that let you win real money.

Native applications are a better choice because the business model underneath and the distribution channels available.

Business model for native applications is clear and the most mature in the mobile industry - introduced by operators many years ago - pay per download or subscription.
You also can offer your application for free and try to monetize it through ads, this option will let you check the market acceptance and consider to release a non free version.

Depending of how cool is your application or service it will be more or less difficult to reach more or less distribution channels, your options will be operators, store and embed it in a device, all is up to your creation.

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mobile businessmodel business model market trends distribution

A global phonebook in your hand

In my last post I introduced you Wittycall alpha release, now I am happy to announce that we are in beta stage.
There are 1000 invitations waiting for mobile technology lovers.

In the new version we have improved several aspects:

Design: More familiar, intuitive and easy to use.


Look and feel: More attractive and clear.


Usability: New components and extra sized form elements.


Hidden search bar: More room for contacts.

New banner area: Following Mobile Advertisement Guidelines for EMEA

Screen options: New tabs and generous softkeys.

Wittycall is a "yellow pages" created by users. Phone numbers published, promoted, rated and commented by you.
A place where share your most interesting and useful phone contacts located around the world.

The service is based on a search engine related to phone numbers, the value added the way you can sort the results:

- Most called contacts (user habit)
- Most Commented (user feedback)
- Most Voted (user preference)
... as well as by date and by name.

That offers a new layer of knowledge non-existent in current phone directories, "yellow pages" or operator services, and that will make the service interesting and useful for users.

It is a new branded mobile product based on content created and consumed by users, related to the most popular actions performed with the handsets, the most common habit, call and send messages.

Beta 1.0 is available for a wide range of J2ME devices, product road-map covers Android application, iPhone application, mobile web and web.

From any phone, any platform, anywhere, you will get access to a public contacts phonebook,
Wittycall also offers a way to save in a secure way your most private ones, only visible from your profile.

So far we have got excellent feedback from you and we are really excited about that, thanks.

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Public phonebook created by you

I am glad to introduce you the last project I have been working on. The service is still in alpha stage.

Wittycall is a search engine related to phone numbers, a new concept based on a social phonebook.
The value added to the service is that users can sort the results of the search by the most called contacts (user habit), commented (user feedback), voted (user preference) ... as well as by date and by name.
From Wittycall users will be able to perform the call, send a SMS/text message or go to an Internet address by clicking on the contact detail.

A free open global phone directory made of user created phone contacts, a new open directory where phone contacts are published, promoted, rated and commented by the users.

Wittycall lets users to share and recommend their favourite services located on a concrete place or country (restaurants, hotels, taxi services, professional services...) with the rest of users, and the most important thing, it lets users to perform a search for a phone number and retrieve an important extra information based on users habits, feedback, preferences and experiences.

Main features

Banner ads

Wittycall offers a great support to banner advertisement. The service will display sponsored ad banners on main screens, special banners on pop ups screens and link banners on SMS/text messages.

Contacts storage

It lets users store and manage their personal phone contacts in a secure central location, independent of user’s handset.

Share

By an easy way users can choose to share their most useful contacts with the general public.

Create a new contact

Wittycall enables to users to develop content in a very easy way. Users can create new contacts from scratch or include contacts stored in their phone contacts application by just clicking a button (PIM - JSR75).

Handset independent

Users can perform calls or send SMS/text messages from any device with a web browser or from a J2ME client application, and get access to their private contacts, anytime, anywhere.

Local communities

Contacts are grouped by communities such as city or town. This helps users filter and view contacts in different communities, depending on his/her selected location.

Sort results

Results can be sorted by the most called, voted, commented, by name and by date. List order can be ascendant or descendant in all the cases.

People

Users can search for other user profiles, and not only see how many contacts have shared each user, but get access to their shared contacts. Thus, users can search for favourite venues, restaurants, hotels... of other users. That feature opens a door for users recommendations and advices, also can be used to promote fave places of celebrities.

User Primary contact

Users can set in their profile which is their primary contact (the phone number I am using now). That feature let users to change their phone number and avoid sending a warning message to all their contacts, just change once and it will be updated everywhere.

Tags or topics

Users will be able to add key words or tags associated to their contacts. From Popular Tags section users will be able to perform searches about contacts containing a concrete tag. Tags are an important support for advertisement analysis engine.


A WIN WIN relationship

WIN for users

Wittycall not only offers to users a phone number, it offers:

- Confidence in the phone number
- Credibility about the service is behind the phone number
- The review and feedback from other users
- A chance to find affinity between users
- To discover and follow habits from other users

These contributions of users become a unique worldwide phone book, always updated, ready to use anytime, anywhere.

Wittycall offers to users a way to keep their personal phone contacts in a secure server, and get access to them from any device with browser or from Wittycall client application.

WIN for advertisement companies

Wittycall is an excellent platform for banner advertisement.

By an advertisement analysis engine Wittycall offers a way to recognise the nature of the contact (hotel, cinema, restaurant...) based on name, description and tags analysis of the contact.

Also the system has information about:

- Contact location
- Users habits
- Users reviews / feedback counter
- Users valuation
- Users affinity
- Users calls counter
- Users messages counter

The nature of the contact and this extra information let Wittycall to include the appropriate banner advertisement to the right user profile, making advertisement campaigns more efficient.

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Handset profiles: Analysis, detection and DetectRight

Everybody agrees that mobile world has experienced the fastest grown compared with any other technology ever, and still is growing, every month appears a new collection of devices, every quarter appears one or two new platforms, technologies, API, new screen resolutions...

If you consider to develop a mobile application or a mobile web site you will need to know all the compatible devices with the technology you want to implement, or maybe all the devices that support a concrete technology. If you want to build a site, you need a way to detect the handset is getting access and serve the most appropriate page format with the right image size.

In my concrete case I needed to know all the phones that supported Bluetooth from J2ME, and just for some countries, I found some places from where perform the search:

J2ME Polish
Java Sun Microsystems
WURFL

And some manufacturers sites from where fill some gaps:

Forum Nokia
Sony Ericsson Developer
MOTODEV
Samgung mobile

I couldn't find a complete list, I found lot of information fragmented in several sources...

Then I discovered DirectRight , I was in touch with Chris Abbott - CTO at DirectRight - We tested the new API to retrieve the needed list of handsets, it was the most complete list without any doubt, covering all needed countries and filtering by a concrete technology required in my last project.

Different needs over a vast world of mobile devices, technologies, markets... as developers we need a way to get rapid access to that data, and be able to build strong mobile web services covering the needed devices for each market.

Sometimes you will need detect the maximum number of devices in real time to offer the most adequate page, content or resource, sometimes you will need a list of handsets to develop and test your application, sometimes you just need data about handsets for a concrete feature you are considering to implement in research stage.

If you are planning to make the research by your own, be ready to spend some weeks making hard and tedious investigations.

Mobile world is fragmented and mobile information profiles too, WURLF is not a complete device database, UAProfile only covers 70% of device atmosphere, J2ME Polish only covers a few and the there are lots of different sources from where you can retrieve information and fill gaps.

Here appears DetectRight, and I like the way DetectRight works. DetectRight retrieves information from biggest sources WURLF, UAProfile, manufacturers, J2ME Polish... and put it together in a unique source of knowledge. Thanks to DetectRight internal algorithms, raw information from the vast diversity is compiled and stored taking into account that information must be retrieved in an efficient way.
DetectRight does not use any of your CPU time, since it uses an optimised server and client code, that offers the best rapprochement to an efficient way to detect and analyse handset profile data.

Chris Abbott, DetectRight CTO:

Thanks to our experiences at W3C, we have been busy building the first device repository in the world that will harmoniously combine the major device description schemes, while not losing granularity of information. It will include a full trust/verification/validity model and the ability to acquire output in various schema formats, including CC/PP RDF, WURFL and browsercaps. In addition, the Worldmap will be greatly expanded to provide visibility of pageviews a customer tracks through the system, running totals of purchases, alerts, and two-way communication. A reports server will be provided to allow DetectRight clients to analyse purchase and pageview habits by particular items of the schema, model and browser frequency charts, and much more. The engine of DetectRight will also be further improved taking advantage of the new DDR core. In addition, we plan to use our expertise to provide a platform-independent web-service analogous to (but better than) WURFL's "WALL" service.

DetectRight API is in development and web search is being improved to offer a wide range of filters, from here I aim those guys to continue the development of that needed service focused not only in mobile web but mobile software development.

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First prize WidSets Competition : BOOM!

Yes, it is a Widset and looks extraordinary amazing -- I believe I need to have a look to that technology.
So far I have had in my mind an idea about Widsets very limited but... here it is, a video game with an excellent performance.
BOOM! game is the first price of the Widsets Competition, is the most impressive implementation seen so far, Will Bamford from MobileRadicals (UK) did it,
wanna see it?



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Mobile World Congress 2008 review: Vringo

Vringo is the most WOW product I have seen in the MWC, fresh, funny and direct to consumer.
Vringo is launching a video sharing community which allows you to share video ringtones (or Vringos) with your buddies each time you call them.
In the demo I was invited to join, in one handset we saved a video, a video message that also can be one of the video clips shared in the community, then we set the video as myVringo. We made a call to another phone and by some kind of magic... the video clip appeared in the destination mobile !
That is the cool idea, when you call to any of your buddies they can see your video ringtone, the one you have set as your Vringo.
You choose the clips you'd like your buddies to see and they choose the clips they'd like you to see. Vringo clips can contain either licensed content from the best of movies, TV and music, or user generated clips that are created on your own mobile phone.

Yeah that's funny !

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Mobile World Congress 2008 review: Clip in touch

After 4 days in the Mobile World Congress I want to review and share some of the most interesting products I have seen.

The first I am going to write about it is Clip in Touch, a company based on Israel that has a very nice product for mobile/cell phones.
It is very impressive to see the demo on real time, because its fast and really easy to use interface.
Basically they are offering a way to turn everyone’s mobile phone into a personal productions studio, with the aid of the handset’s microphone and camera, users may record personal audio and images and mix them into the ready made templates.
With just a few simple clicks, users can mix video, music, text and images to make the personal appear professional. The completed message can be sent either over the web, mobile phone network or both, using the phone`s list of contacts. Video clips may be saved in a personal folder for future user.

I did a funny message with music, voice and text very quickly.
Clip in Touch Cellular solutions are J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile® and WAP compliant.



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Handset Manufacturers, market stats Q4 2007

According to market watcher Strategy Analytics these are the results:

Q4 2007


Nokia sold a staggering 133.5m mobiles
Samsung 46.4m
Motorola 40.9m
Sony Ericsson 30.8m
LG 23.7m
Apple shifted 2.3m iPhones


Market share remains as follows:

Nokia 40.2% market share, the highest in its history
Samsung 14%
Motorola 12.3%
Sony Ericsson 9.3%
LG 7.1%
Apple 0.6%


Overall, 332m mobile phones shipped in Q4 2007, up 13 per cent on the same period in 2006. Some 1.13bn shipped in the year as a whole, 12.4 per cent more than shipped in 2006.

Strategy Analytics said it expects shipments to hit 1.24bn this year.


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handset manufacturer stats mobile cellphones market share

Yahoo contributes to the mobile web fragmentation with Yahoo! Go 3.0

Yahoo has announced Yahoo! Go 3.0 beta. Basically is an application written in J2ME that you can download to your phone and offers Internet services in the form of Widgets. You will find your fave brands Ebay, MySpace, Flickr, MTV... and also you can download Widgets created by developers... that sounds me like... Widsets ?
With aims to follow the open API trend, Yahoo offers to developers a way to publish Widgets by using a new markup named Blueprint.
Blueprint is a very simple xml that let you just display information on the screen and control user events.
But the important think here is that Yahoo is introducing a new markup language to the list, if all the important web companies start launching a new markup it will be the start of the end, tons of different markups languages to cover all the mobile Internet.
Bad movement Yahoo! Go !

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