Category Archive for ‘app store’ at WIP Jam Sessions

Archive for the 'app store' Category

WIPJam @ MWC App Planet - Agenda is up!

Published

on January 11, 2010

in Barcelona, Mobile Jam Session, Uncategorized, WIPjam, app store, developer and mobile world congress

. 2 Comments

Mobile World Congress is coming up VERY soon! Yikes. It’s time to go through the checklist:
- airfare booked - check
- room booked - check
- signed up for WIPJam - check!

Wait a minute…. are you telling me you you haven’t done any of these yet :-0

Well - you are in luck! Because WIP is a Mobile World Congress App Planet Partner, it’s not too late to get yourself signed up and even get some good deals.

FIRST the travel

Hotel deals: MWC has identified several hotels in Barcelona that do not require a minimum stay. This is perfect for developers and guests that will only be attending a specific App Developer Conference or a limited portion of the Congress.

Airfare deals: Save up to 30% on domestic and up to 20% on international travel to Barcelona between 10 February 2010 and 23 February 2010 with Spanair and the Star Alliance Network.

To take advantage go to: http://www.appplanethotel.beinbeyond.com/
UserName: WIP
Password: Developer

There are also lots of great apartments around to share. We know a few folks who are looking for some roomies - let us know if you’d like to connect.

NOW for WIPJam and FREE Passes to MWC!

WIP has 200 Guest/Exhibit passes for entry to MWC2010, to give to eligible developers to attend(that’s a 599 Euro value). What’s an eligible developer you ask? We will favor small companies, you must attend WIPJam, and you have to write something creative on the WIPJam registration page!

Why attend WIPJam?

Well - you wouldn’t ask that if you were a Jam veteran! It’s a great place to learn about mobile development, participate in discussions to find out information really relevant to YOU, and to meet and connect with LOTS of people in the mobile developer ecosystem that can start making a difference in your business right way.

Check out the Agenda! Featuring:

1 WIP Buzz Session
2   UnPanels - #1 Sticky and Spready Redux, #2 App Store Placement Optimization
8   Discussion Groups: Cross Platform Development, Merchandising your Application, Opportunities in Open Source, Mobile Web Development, Emerging Markets, Augmented Reality, Features and Enhancements for Addictive Apps and Getting Cool Content from the Cloud
1   Lunch
10+   Demos
200+   Jammers

Great sponsors like:

Qualcomm, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Enough Software, MoSync, O2 Litmus, Perfecto Mobile, GetJar and Oracle.

And here are just some of the speakers:
Sean Galligan, Flurry
Mark Curtis, Flirtomatic
Francisco Kattan , Alcatel Lucent
Simon Davies, Snaptu
Patrick Mork, Getjar
Deep Shah, Buzzd
Katie Lips, Kisky Netmedia
Robert Virkus, Enough Software
Eran Yaniv, Perfecto Mobile
Charles McLeod, MetaFlow
Matts Bergrund, Swirly Space
Tony Hartley, MoSync
Ofir Leitner, Mobile Monday Televiv
James Parton, O2 Litmus
Emmanuel Ekuwem, ATCON (Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria)
Lester Madden, Augmented Planet
David Caabeiro, Sequence Point
Patrik Nordstrom, idevio
Scott Jensen, LegiTime
Raj Singh, Skyfire
Stephen Cull, Oracle

and of course Caroline Lewko (me) and Thibaut Rouffineau of WIP facilitating, ringing bike bells, cutting off any visible ties and making sure the developer voice is heard loud and clear!

More details to come as we wrap up sponsors and speakers! See you soon.

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32 appstores on the WIP appstore wiki at the end of 2009!

Published

thibaut

on January 3, 2010

in app store and developer

. 0 Comments

32 mobile appstores!

That’s what we finished 2009 with (see January report on wipconnector)! And luckily we do not list yet the various appstore announcements on the verge of the mobile sphere like the Ford SYNC enabled appstore or Sun Java Store otherwise our wiki would be on fire.

So 2009 was the year of the appstore glut maybe… however it was also a year that saw new forms / concepts of appstores rather than un-differentiated ones, addressing specific issues such as discovery and recommendation or specific markets which can only be favorable for developers and consumers. Have a look at the newcomers for December and judge by yourself.

If we are to judge future smartphone platform success by the number of appstores distributing their apps, Android has a slight lead with 53% of appstores distributing Android apps, followed by Windows Mobile with 50% (mostly for historical reason one could claim), Blackberry with 40% and Symbian with 37.5% are forming a second group of established players, followed by iPhone and Palm with 19% closing the ranks.

What is even more interesting is to look at the fact that about 2/3 of these appstores were launched in the last 6 months… looking at the platforms targeted by these appstores the results are in line with the previous numbers. If we look at “new appstores” only… those created in the past 6 months… unsurprisingly a lot more fragmentation kicks in as the number of new appstores players concentrating on a specific platform counterbalances the large OEM / Operators coming in this space. So newer players but… the same trend can be seen with 40% for Android and Windows mobile, 27% for Symbian and 18% for Blacbkerry, 13% for iPhone, and 5% by Palm and Limo (for widget only).

One can only be surprised looking at these figures by the similarities between a long established (struggling?) player in the mobile platform space Microsoft and the new kid on the block Google’s Android. Both of them encouraging or generating fortuitously the creation of somewhat fragmented appstores ecosystem around the platform . Sign of success or sign of failure?

New appstores in December:

Zanox : Simple concept of appstore including mobile, web code snippet, SAAS, looking to connect developers to brands and publishers. A B2B exchange place aimed at increasing on-line purchases by encouraging developers to produce interactive and addictive applications using Zanox affiliate APIs.

In a sense this appstore concept brings something rather new and interesting to developers : access to B2B marketing and advertising money without the need to build personal commercial relationships with brands and agencies… With the obvious drawback of getting a much higher share of risk and exposing themselves to copy.

Overall this is a good example of a web appstore and will be a good touchstone to see how revenue making can be associated with the mobile web.

MobileIron: Another good example of an appstore turning towards B2B to bring new revenue streams for developers. In this case by getting IS department within enterprises to select / pay for / deploy applications for their entire workforce. This kind of solution could sounds like an obvious merge between traditional device management solutions and appstores. But in an era where the enterprise mobile IT agenda tends to follow consumer mobile technology solutions, this could be a good way for enterprises to do a substantial leapfrog in their mobile IS policies.

It is also quite interesting to see how new appstores position themselves around recommendation(see very good post from Visionmobile on the subject), generating revenue from affiliation (as per our previous post on ideal appstore). 2 examples there :

Mplayit an appstore entirely built as a facebook application

and positioned around facebook friend recommendation.

Specialised in iPhone, Blackberry, Java applications, and

recently Android .
AppstoreHQ.com an appstore specialized

in social media / twitter / blogger recommendation for iPhone applications.

That’s it for 2009!

Now tell us! What will you remember of 2009 when it comes to appstores ?

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Comparetheappstores.com

Published

thibaut

on December 12, 2009

in app store, carnival of mobilists and developer

. 1 Comment

Finally after 2 months of inputting, cleaning up, asking for data about the various appstores in the market we’re finally at the stage where we can publish a summary pdf gathering all the data the wip appstore wiki holds about the 27 appstores inputted there at the beginning of December (and we have now reached 29…)

Our objective in publishing this information as a document is to make it easier for you to compare the various appstores by sitting them next to one another on a few sheet of paper. Whatever your purpose is : platform choice, country choice, pricing decision in a bird’s eye view you’ll have all the channels in the market. Going forward we will publish a monthly “dump” of the wiki for you to keep track of evolutions and changes in this space.

Having put this together for the first time there are a few things that jump to mind:

The sheer volume of channels for Windows Mobile applications, with 60% of appstores do sell Windows Mobile applications. Quite interestingly this is also where the majority of “established players” come from, posing the question whether or not the new Windows Marketplace will change this state of affairs.
The growing support for widgets in appstores with the : Android Market, Palm App Catalog, JIL, Vodafone 360 initiatives being the most prominent examples.
Despite the absence of “large players” (apart from Google) in the Android apps market, the growth of the small and independent Android stores., driven by 3 factors:
- Apparent and relative freedom to create appstores for smaller players… [PS: Just as I was writing this blog the news leaked that Motorola were looking at launching an Android specific appstore SHOP4APPS which would show that larger player are also getting involved... watch this space]
- Working around the content filters imposed by the Android Market : mikandi focusing on creative mobile adult content and AndAppstore
- Focus on niche devices and applications reflecting the variety / fragmentation of the Android space with Camangi Market specializing in MID sized devices (5 to 9-inches Android device)

Now publishing the information in a doc is just a first step we’re after your thoughts, demands on how we can make this information more useful, more usable, more complete to you… if you have any thoughts you want to share please tell us, we have a few thoughts such as making the appstores comparable online or searches based on platform but the if you have a few ideas of your own please let us know, whether it is it improve the quality, quantity of the data, the usability of this data and the ability to compare the various fields… all will be welcome.

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Carnival of Mobilists #202

Published

Teresa

on November 30, 2009

in Mobile Jam Session, Mobilist, WIPjam, app store, applications, carnival of mobilists, developer and wip

. 0 Comments

This week, the Carnival is hosted by Mobile Strategy where you will find thought-provoking pieces, inside scoops, tough questions and overall interesting posts on a variety of topics. Included is an interview that our Wipster Thibaut conducted with Victor Shaburov, the CEO of Handster, a company that provides a mobile appstore and specializes in white label appstores for OEM and Operators.

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Interview with Victor Shaburov CEO of Handster

Published

thibaut

on November 27, 2009

in Interview and app store

. 4 Comments

Victor To accompany the launch of the WIPwiki appstore WIP’s been going around interviewing mobile Appstore providers of the kind you generally do not hear about. In this first interview we talked to Victor Shaburov, CEO of Handster. Handster provide a mobile appstore but more importantly specialize in white label appstores for OEM and Operators.

WIP: We love the name of your company does it stand for “Napster of the handheld device world”?

VS : Yes, the name originally had some hints to this, because we were doing SDK with direct payment and peer-to-peer sharing (with possibility to make a few dollars on sharing apps). Sharing was later dropped, but the name remained.

[Neat idea to get users to swap app directly with built-in billing and an affiliate scheme, this one score high in the ideal appstore (see on the left hand corner) discussion]

Handster launched pretty recently in a world where appstores are getting more numerous by the day. Why did you decide to start a new appstore then? What makes you different?

Project was actually started in 2004, so it is not that recent.
Right now we are focusing on providing more qualitative content:

we are adding screenshots to app descriptions.

we support 10 languages and translated lot of program descriptions

we started making video reviews of applications with professional voice artists. Video reviews explain the software and make it easier for customers to make purchase decision.

we are working on worldwide SMS payment integration, to make purchase simple for everyone.

And we have highly flexible white label AppStore platform for carriers, handset manufacturers and other distributors.

Video review of MiniTranscanada as found on Handster (don’t ask why we chose this one )

Unfortunately, though we have seen a lot of appstore launched lately, none of them seems to be getting the level of success that Apple and iPhone developers have. Do you think we’ll see such a success coming to other platforms?

Android already shows a similar success. Apple AppStore generates up to 9USD per user/month, Andoid around 8 USD as recent reviews show - so that is close.
We believe that other platforms will catch up with them after some time.

As you support multiple platforms on Handster, do you have any insights in terms of where should developers concentrate their efforts?

We are neutral and welcome success of any platform.

You say you work with HP and LG to give them content for their stores, how does it work? If more people get on the way doesn’t it mean less money for developers?

Apple has a special situation, where they own hardware, OS and are able to push their conditions to mobile operators.
But in general, you should make everyone happy - and mobile operators and handset manufacturers should participate in the success of AppStores.
We see potential for us in this area and offer white label AppStore platform for mobile operators and handset manufacturers.
That, of course, makes a developer’s share smaller, but what matters in the end is the paycheck that they receive.
We offer software developers stronger discoverability and promotion of their applications on AppStores of our partners - this is an additional revenue channel for them.

Handster_main_page
What’s your view on application testing and certification? How long is Handster certification process?

We test applications of new software developers, and once we are sure about their quality, we basically allow to publish updates and new apps live anytime.
Depending on a partner (carrier, handset manufacturer), we sometimes do re-testing for a particular handset and offer only compatible software.

Where do you think appstores in general have to improve?

More payment options, better discoverability of applications, quality content.

And finally, what is going to be your challenge in the coming months?

We are actively looking for more partners among mobile operators and handset manufacturers from one side, to offer them a white label AppStore platform and aggregated content.
And we are looking for more software developers, to distribute their apps through our channels. Developers can register with Handster using this link: http://www.handster.com/developers.php

Thank you Victor!

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