Tag Archive for ‘app store’ at WIP Jam Sessions

Tag Archive for 'app store'

Getjar unfolded! - Interview with Patrick Mork

Published

on February 4, 2010

in Barcelona, Getjar, Interview, Jam Session, Mobile Jam Session, WIPjam, app store, developer, mobile world congress and predictions

. 0 Comments

On the 14th of January, just a few days after CES, I interviewed Patrick Mork VP of Marketing at GetJar, talking about the appstore boom at CES, the notion of openness in the appstore world, and the latest developer portal Getjar are launching. So here’s a quick summary in words… but also the overall interview is available as a podcast, this is the first time we’re experimenting with audio so let us know what you think of it!

Download the whole podcast:

WIP: CES has seen the launch of numerous appstores (as a reminder the AT&T AppCenter, Samsung Apps TV, Intel AppUp, YourAppshop) do you think the future of appstores lies in an increasing number of them in 2010?

Patrick: The future of appstores is a bit like throwing a rock in the air, it will likely come and crash down! There’s a rush towards appstores at the moment following the Apple success and the failure of operators in the content space. Runn

ing an appstore is difficult and I predict a majority of them will die in the coming 12 months. Major difficulties in running an appstore lie in the ability to source good content and the ability to control the quality of the content.

Getjar CEO Ilja Laurs predicted that the future of appstore

would be in openness(slide 14). Is this something you’re acting on already?

Openness is about offering consumers the best possible experience. It should be about offering the application that was developed by the person with the best capability to write the content, not necessarily the company who own and control the appstores. An open ecosystem is about having no barriers in terms of what content gets uploaded on Getjar and not forbidding a browser to be uploaded because there’s already a browser there . Having said that Getjar is very mindful of protecting brands and developers as well as ensuring decency and integrity of content for end users but we do not want to play the role of king makers amongst developers we want to give end-users the choice.

A few other things we do is we do not enforce signing, we do not limit the number of updates, fast and guarant

GetChart_Global_Dec09

eed submission time (48 hours)

Getjar recommendations are based on user recommendations and advertising, where does openness fit into this?

Openness can be seen in the fact that recommendations by end-users are the main drivers rather than a skewed recommendation based on a limited number of applications present in your store .

Obviously the recommendation algorithm, (based on reviews, downloads and rating) is not public, there are limit to openness. The second operating principle is advertising which is critical to give developers the chance to promote their apps, in this sense we’re unique not only because we allow promotion but also because the promotion is performance based on a pay per download basis.

So apps are free on GetJar today and on top of that I need to pay for advertising… so how I do I make money?

There’s a misconception in the market today that free means no money, there are quite a few examples there, Opera Mini (paid paid by Google for the search traffic they drive), Flirtomatic (virtual gifts) or games publishers putting free applications on GetJar and selling premium versions of their applications.

The paid for apps model we see as not being the most successful one. The statistics by Flurry published a few month back shows that the average iPhone apps made $7500 on the appstore, it’s just not enough to make a living.

We shouldn’t forget that monetizing content on mobile is an industry challenge not just a challenge for GetJar. If you compare this with the Facebook economy there hasn’t been a single example in mobile of a developer growing to a multimillion dollar business and making an exit, when Playfish did.

Having said that Getjar will introduce paid for apps in the second half of the year in US and UK (interesting news!!)

Analytics and sharing of information seems to be key to allow developers to make the right development, pricing and distribution choices. How do you position yourself on Analytics?

The new GetJar developer portal (I loved it!)

Analytics are a feature that Getjar provides increasingly more to developers through our new developer portal. Getjar now allows developer to see not only how many downloads you have per country, per device, per operating system but also to compare it with an average of all the applications on Getjar! Getjar also makes available trending on a per device basis and per operating system basis to allow developers to port their apps to new platforms. More importantly we provide opportunity mapping telling you the opportunity you could generate if you were present on certain handsets!You can also see top 20 apps per download per preceding day and week per country!

We believe this is pretty unique and we’d be glad to get feedback during the WIPJam session at MWC.

We will start organizing a weekly series of webinar Getjar to help developers access and use this functionality, and sharing our knowledge around using Getjar to promote your app.

What about malware? (this was recorded just after malware was reported on Android)

Smartphones are more associated with malware and with their current rise the the rise of malware is almost unavoidable.

Appstores are all about balance, ensuring fast approval AND quality insurance.. and this is a difficult balance to reach. At Getjar we guarantee that your app will be on Getjar 48 hours after submission (or at least to get a response) AND we try to maintain quality standards from this perspective we’re pretty unique among Android Market being fast (24 hours) and low quality on one side and Apple Appstore being slow (up to 7 months) and high quality on the other side.

Top countries for January 2010 downloads on Getjar

Country	Current Period	Previous Period	Trend
Indonesia	14,454,167	13,736,562	5%
India	8,661,600	7,774,230	11%
United States	4,817,565	3,815,531	26%
United Kingdom	1,356,746	1,400,482	3%
Egypt	1,280,035	1,216,057	5%
South Africa	1,263,530	1,240,341	2%
Viet Nam	742,146	824,177	10%
Bangladesh	707,025	687,147	3%
Pakistan	691,005	632,533	9%
Turkey	659,932	455,913	45%

GetJar has traditionally been associated with Java devices is the rise of smartphones a bad thing for you?

GetJar stands for APPSOLUTELY EVERYTHING so we’re targeting all handsets wether Java platforms or smartphones. Developers however shouldn’t forget that Java devices continue to be the majority of phones in the market and the only way for developers to be financially successful is to be cross-platform.

The positive news for developers with the increasing awareness of mobile apps is that it has had a hugely positive impact on the sales of apps on feature phones. As an example we now do about 50 M downloads a month compared to 14 M a year ago, with 50% of business still on Java phones. The US in particular has grown from nowhere on our top list to being number 3 in our download figures, developing markets like India and Indonesia have also grown 2 to 3 times faster than the US market. 25% of our North American consumers download content once a day, and globally the figure goes up to 36%.

Apps Apps Apps so what about the Mobile web, how does it play in your strategy?

Among Getjar users mobile usage we predicted the rise of the mobile web. In a survey done a year ago we saw that 65% of users were using their mobile more than their PC to access the web. We do encourage mobile web development as we recognize it as a way to overcome platform fragmentation That’s why we introduced mobile site shortcuts a year back, an icon that’s been downloaded onto the end-user phone and appears as an app even though it’s only a link back to a website. It allows developers to cut on developement costs. Mobile site shortcuts are now 10% of our traffic. Facebook for example using this has 31M downloads on GetJar twice the amount of they’ve have done on iTunes!

PS: Obviously you’ll notice my somewhat hesitant pace… for my excuse I wasn’t drunk but just interviewing someone at 1AM my time after a flight ordeal…

Tweet This Post

WIPJam @ MWC App Planet - Agenda is up!

Published

clewko

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.

Tweet This Post

Carnival of Mobilists #204

Published

Teresa

on December 15, 2009

in Mobilist, WIPjam, carnival of mobilists, developer, open source and wip

. 0 Comments

This week’s carnival is brought to the mobile world by London Calling. This last carnival of the decade is bursting with interesting reading. Including an article from Raj Singh, a regular WIPJam attendee and member of our Developer Advisory Team, entitled Geo-monopolies. Volker Hirsch has a post on “The Power of Open: Why Android is Big” and our own Thibaut Rouffineau provides a comprehensive comparison of app stores! Here at WIP, we are looking forward to another great year of Carnival of Mobilists in 2010!

Tweet This Post

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.

Tweet This Post

Carnival of Mobilists #199

Published

Teresa

on November 9, 2009

in Mobilist, applications, carnival of mobilists, developer, mobile web and wip

. 0 Comments

iguana This week the Carnival stops at the new-look Mobileslate, where host Eric Chan takes the helm. The eclectic collection of posts includes a closer look at app stores (facts, figures and payment mechanisms) and a welcome deep-dive into key mobile market figures from Chetan Sharma.

Tweet This Post

Carnival of the Mobilists #165: VisionMobile

Published

Sam

on March 17, 2009

in Mobilist

. 0 Comments

Whoops! I took a step back into the past! This week’s carnival is actually from VisionMobile who has the heads up on the great debate of whether or not smartphones are really the future. Also, a nice piece on whether the Windows App Store is better than the Apple App store (The Mac vs. PC never ends, even on mobile!).

Guess who is up next week for Carnival? That’s right, its us. Stay tuned.

Tweet This Post

And the winner of the most important API of 2009 is….

Published

clewko

on January 30, 2009

in Jam Session, Uncategorized, developer, mobile world congress and wireless

. 3 Comments

We’ve asked our discussion leaders for WIPJam session to share their insight of the mobile developer world. This post was penned by James Parton, Head of O2 Litmus, the mobile developer programme with a twist and a sponsor of the WIP Jam Session at Mobile World Congress 2009 (#MWC09).

Open source, crowd sourcing, app stores, open networks, Web 2.0, Mobile 2.0, co-creation, user generated content. It’s clear that the future of application development is a hot industry topic.

Tip your hat to Apple. They have quickly transformed a cottage industry, struggling to find a poster child, into a serious business in a very short space of time. Through great end-to-end user experience – often overlooked by many in the area - we now have people buying apps on a regular basis. If you had asked those same people 6 months ago what kind of app they were interested in, they would have struggled to even define what an app was, let alone have a clear view on what was missing from their app life.

This wave has also beached in corporate boardrooms with many companies now launching or planning to launch app stores in reaction to the success of the Apple App Store. This leads us to ask where will the industry be in 6 months time?

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer for a second. They switch on their PCs and are be offered applications by their internet service provider. They then go to their favourite portal and may be offered applications, next they will see sponsored links for applications from their search engine.

Next they then pull their mobile phone out of their pocket and see an application store from their handset manufacturer, and sitting next that is the icon for their mobile network’s app store. Confused? Just imagine what the customer is thinking.

On the surface this explosion of app stores is a good thing for developers – more places to sell your apps means more people buying those apps, right

However, this could be misleading. Many of these app stores are using aggregators to fill them up. This may lead to the vast majority of stores containing identical catalogues.

I can see parallels between the growing app market and digital music. Research has shown that over 90% of digital music catalogues are never downloaded. It’s an extreme example of Prato’s law. Are App stores already following the same path?

If these stores are filled by aggregators, and managed by marketers believing it’s all about catalogue, how do you as a developer get noticed? You want your app to be Smells Like Teen Spirit, and avoid being the obscure Cat Stevens B side from 1967 that no one wants!

So how do you solve this problem?

Customers. They are out there. They have an opinion. They are potential consumers of your products. You should get to know them, and love them. If you want to be successful, you have to prioritise customer relationship and service. Don’t just focus on the next feature you can build into your software

Going back to my digital music analogy, we are going to see a huge attrition rate for apps. Thousands will never be downloaded or make profit. Can you afford to burn time and money speculating on what customers might want? Why not ask them before you commitment your engineering resource

How do you find and reach these customers?

You should be seeking out partners that provide the most important API going forward. The winner of the most important API of 2009? It’s the Customer API.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if a large organisation was willing to step out of the way and let you interact directly with its customers? You would be able to demonstrate, co-develop and refine your product directly with end users?

This has to be a win – win approach. You save time and effort by refining your ideas before commercially launching, the end user feels empowered by helping to improve the products they and their friends will end up using, plus they get to experience these apps before anyone else – very different to a traditional retail environment where you buy and either love or hate the app you get.

Come and check us out here and upload your apps: www.o2litmus.co.uk
or you can contact me directly via Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamesparton

Have you registered for WIPJAM yet. Rumour has it there are 2 tickets to give-away to the O2-Telefoncia party on Tues nite…

Tweet This Post

2009 Predictions for Mobile and Wireless Developers

Published

clewko

on January 9, 2009

in developer, mobile web, predictions and wireless

. 3 Comments

How can you tell the holiday is over? Conferences have started again ala CES, and the phone and emails are on full throttle. Do any of you use the current thinking about only taking calls/emails at 2 designated times during the day? Does it really work?

January is traditionally a time for annual predictions. I have been on the fence whether to weigh in this year as there are many good predications around such as Rudy’s or from Carlo and Russell’s Mob Happy, and I didn’t want to repeat anything, but if there is something that needs to be emphasized, then that’s just the way it is! So here they are:

1. Tough times ahead.
I reported in my June newsletter that VC’s weren’t funding, especially carrier related deals. Rutberg’s newsletter just came out and declared that the second half of 2008 was the lowest level of VC funding since 2003. I agree with Rudy that I too am going to see at least 10 companies that I know well go under. It started with Trutap, that I had the absolute pleasure of being on the board for the last year, and may end with the Motorola device group, which we all know has been struggling. Assume no one is immune.

NY’s Resolution for Developers: Those with low overhead will likely end up the winners when we come out of this economic wind tunnel. And absolutely those who are best connected get the furthest ahead (Hint: ask Arv about the WIP Connector Quiz to see how you fare).

2. ‘Access’ will be the new ‘Open’. (as Twitter is the new black)
The industry is tired of hearing about Open - it has caused confusion to what open source really is and what open is really not. There is no honour in claiming open any more. I think the industry finally understands that, so will talk about ‘access’; to more operator APIs, access to more customers through beta sandboxes, and app stores to make it easier for developers to innovate and sell.

NY’s Resolution for Developers: Follow the money. Make careful choices about working with new platforms with the end goal of being profitable, not just cool. But hey, if you can make $1M making a bodily function application - go for it!

3. Less US Centric
Perhaps it’s due to where I’m based, but my industry news and the focus of most developers I know is solidly the US as #1, with Europe slowly following behind and anything else a place only for exotic vacations. With the US reeling from the economic distress, Europe reaching mobile handset saturation, China and India finally turning on the 3G engines, eyes will turn to emerging markets for business. I sure saw a lot of great developes in Brazil last month. Of course, we all are in love with Obama, but it sounds like he too has a much broader perspective than previous administrations.

NY’s Resolution for Developers: Be smart about planning for and entering new markets. Plan ahead for obvious things like usability and language differences, but do your homework on market needs (enterprise is bigger in many of these markets) and distribution is different too.

4. Fragmentation by any other name is still…..
I’ve been commenting on fragmentation every year, and I only see signs of its increase. In addition to the major OS platforms, we now have more development platforms, more browsers, more app stores, and more devices (40+ Adroid devices alone coming this year, and the new Palm Pre just announced). Porting and backfilling is still wasting 40-50% of a developer’s time. Another 20-30% is going to be wasted in gaining access to app stores, which still have discovery issues. What’s left for innovation and development?

NY’s Resolution for Developers: Find positive ways to be vocal about how fragmentation is affecting your ability to be innovative such as contributing to OMTP’s BONDI initiative that is identifying standards for the mobile web. And don’t forget about marketing, more app stores does not mean you don’t have to do any work, in fact you should be honing up on your marketing.

Your comments or addition are always welcome!

Interested in 2008 predictions - find them here. I did pretty well, except predicting that someone will finally get local search right… perhaps this year. And 2007 which was really good, especially prediciting the rise in developers can be found here.

Tweet This Post

Carnival Up on Technokitten site

Published

clewko

on January 6, 2009

in Mobilist, mobile web and wireless

. 0 Comments

Happy New year everyone. I don’t know about you - but as of today, the phone haven’t stopped ringing and the emails are flying. My first predition of the year - the holidays are officially over! I’ll get my own 2009 predictions up soon.

In the meantime, the first Carnival of Mobilists for the year is up on Helen Keenan’s site Technokitten. Lots of good information on predictions, apps stores, and more great stuff to start the off on the right foot - mobilely of course!

Tweet This Post