Viva La Blog

There are two key growth numbers from Commscore’s latest report to the end of May 2010 (USA figures)

1. Smartphones up 8% since Feb
2. Android up from 9% to 13% of Smartphones since Feb

So, as previously predicted at Viva La Mobile, Android continues to steal market share from the other smartphone platforms. At the same time overall Smartphone numbers are growing, which points to a double gain for supporters of Android.

What does this mean? Quite simply, supporting Android wth your

from Moconews.net

key apps has become a ‘must’ rather than a ‘maybe’.

I saw my first Australian TV ad for an Android device this week. It’s an ad for the Motorola DEXT (aka CLIQ) and shows off the social network integration features of the MOTOBLUR UI. The ad, which is actually from Optus, does not mention “Android” anywhere while on the Optus website for the device the word “Android OS” is buried deep within the features list.

So where is Android at in Australia now?

Certainly Australian ‘Droidiness is lagging well behind Europe and the USA where carriers have been promoting android devices like the Motorola Droid and HTC Magic for some time, not to mention selling them in large quantities. In the USA Android is the fastest growing Smartphone platform.

Android gaining at the expense of others

I think we will see a similar effect in the Australian market over the next 6 months. Telstra, Optus and Vodafone Hutchison are all launching multiple Android handsets this quarter, and it is great to see Optus advertising them (even if it neglects to mention the presence of Google’s OS at all). The variety of designs and advanced apps on offer should give consumers a welcome alternative to iPhone and provide an escape from iPhone me-too syndrome. Yes, that’s right young hipster, you can be unique again!!

My prediction: While no single handset model is likely to have the impact the iPhone has had (possibly ever), the cumulative weight of cool advanced Android devices will be far greater than iPhone in the longer term. As the Android market share rapidly grows here so will the demand for localised apps. This is where the brands and agencies of this country need to be alert and remove their iPhone blinkers. Apple now has company in Australia and ignoring that would be a mistake.

Update: some more android growth info

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/03/how-the-iphone-could-end-up-in-second-place/

Interesting discussion currently going on in the cocoaheads Google group. Someone posted the excellent question: I wonder if anyone has had any experience working or getting phone apps developed by companies off shore. Are there any tips, traps or happy or sad stories etc

Personally I have always been skeptical of getting work done by an unknown team in a country such as India. While I am sure there are some excellent software companies over there, the sheer number of pundits implies that there is probably a lot of chaff surrounding the wheat, a lot of rough surrounding the diamonds, a big haystack on top of the needles….you know what I mean.

So as enticing as the bargain basement pricing might seem, is it worth it?

Here is what one reply in the Google thread said:

I’ve seen two projects outsourced to Indian software houses.

The first was a fixed price 3 month project that took 9 months to deliver. The price stayed the same, but overall the extra expense of having a full-time Tester on the job for 6 months longer ended up putting the project over budget.

The second project was various small routines and standalone applications in a larger suite. The rate was cheap – about $1000 per month. However, without exception everything they worked on had to be rewritten.

Here’s another:

the “traditional” model of off shoring to countries
such as India I have *never* seen work. Over the last 6 or so years
I’ve been personally involved in two Indian off-shored projects (both
with large, “reputable” Indian companies) and have seen another two
from outside (with friends on the project), all of them were
disasters, for various reasons. In each case, the code written in
India was thrown away & rewritten, in the last case I’ve seen, the
Indian team were simply not able to understand the problem domain.

It would be interesting to hear from those who have had good experiences where a project has been developed offshore at a discount price and delivered on time and to spec. In the mean time, in my biased opinion, I would recommend using an experienced local development studio for mobile application projects as the complexities involved may push the limits of the offshore model beyond breaking point, resulting in lost time, money and reputation.

This is potentially some great news out of MWC 2010 in Barcelona: A whole gaggle of major mobile networks have formed an alliance to bring a consolidated marketplace for apps to their consumers, totalling over 3 billion subs. You can see the details here: Wholesale Applications Community.

It’s ambitious, it will be wracked with technical challenges, and it will no doubt take way longer to achieve than planned. But it has to be done. Mobile networks have watched over the last 12 months as their content revenues plunged – cannibalized by the app stores of the very handsets they are selling. The only way to combat this is to provide a rival offering that can go toe-to-toe on a global scale, and the key factor will be billing.

Billing, or inability to easily perform billing, has been a thorn in the side of developers and distributors for time immemorial (okay, 8 years or so). Apple have the strength of their iTunes platform, but the Wholesale Apps Community will have the huge advantage of direct mobile billing to billions of customers. The lure of that cannot be underestimated. And if the process by which developers will distribute their apps is made simple it will then cut out the middle-man aggregator and boost returns for the people who actually build the products. I dream of the day that I can put our multiplayer games in front of huge numbers of potental players, with on-bill micro transactions enabled across the board, and a 70%+ revenue share. Oh Happy Day!

I am cautiously optimistic that the Wholesale Apps Community will bring many millions more consumers into the world of purchasing mobile content and give developers another avenue for making a return on their hard work. I will be watching with great interest.

Hi World.

So, we’ve been a busy little team lately and the new website is starting to take shape for 2010. The mobile apps and games industry has changed an awful lot since we started out in 2003 and it makes sense to start discussing these changes and where things are going. Hence this blog.

What we’d like to do is to not hold back. We’d like to discuss what really is going on, who’s winning, who’s losing, what’s working and what really gets our blood boiling.

Okay…i’ll start:

Right now i’m loving Android. It’s the vibrant young prince waiting in the wings to knock off the doddering old King J2ME. It’s got style, it’s got panache, it’s fit and has the world at it’s feet. Unfortunately, just like a young prince, Android is also impatient, misguided and won’t listen to its sage advisors.

I greeted the release of the Android SDK with open arms and a cry of  “huzzah! an end to the woes of J2ME fragmentation”. Sixteen months and seven SDK versions later (count them… 1.0, 1.1, 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.01, 2.1) the no-fragmentation dream seems to be in tatters. What is Google doing?!? While iPhone rips it up, releasing just one new SDK about every 18 months, Google is driving developers nuts with the constant updates, API changes and class deprecations. Combined with a distinct lack of useful documentation, I sometimes wonder if Google is having a gag at our expense over at the ‘Plex.

Our current project ran into it’s first major frag-snag when implementing an email contacts function. On 1.6 and below you use one system to get all your contacts email addresses. On 2.0 they scratched that, and replaced it with an entirely new way. That’s right, they didn’t just deprecate the old method and advise you to upgrade your code for the future. They simply removed the old way completely. Bloody hell!

Next came the multiple screen sizes. When we had 240 x 320 and 320 x 480 we were going ok. Then the Droid appeared with 480 x 854 and I started worrying that this was getting out of hand. When the Nexus One debuted with 480 x 800 I wanted to punch the little green Android mascot hard in it’s stupid smiling head. Harsh, I know, but someone please think of the developers!!

Still, despite it all, I think Android will be huge and once Google feel they have ‘got it right’ they will slow down to smell the roses and let the developers get on with the business of making great apps that can work on millions of handsets *crosses fingers*.