News has just broken of a new $150 Million VC fund to invest in mobile applications and services for mobile platforms.
"…investing in the long term success of those that demonstrate market leadership and unique differentiation"
Coincidentally (or not), this month’s Mobile Monday London is at Thomson Reuters so I expect we will get more details this evening.
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The latest market statistics from iSuppli show "first quarter of 2008 appeared to be unaffected by the economic slowdown".
The press release is worth a read as it gives a great summary of the latest position of Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Interestingly, it also mentions China players are emerging…
"While the top handset brands are in neck-and-neck race, the industry is keeping an eye on emerging players in the market—particularly China’s Huawei and ZTE."
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I came across Mob4Hire this week. A new site that provides "Crowd Sources Mobile Application Testing". The developer submits projects involving specific handsets and network operators. End users bid on projects and get paid via Paypal.
It’s often the case that an application is tested but fails in real-life use due to limitation of some random network operator. Mob4Hire can help reduce this problem by allowing developers to reach a greater breadth of network operators and phones. I also see it as a much more targeted solution than beta testing where typically only fraction of percent of users submit useful observations.
On the other hand, I can see some companies having problems with confidentiality and the inevitable variable quality of testers. Also, this site doesn’t solve the problem of ongoing support and testing - where the majority of problems surface. If you/your company didn’t test the particular variant then it may be difficult to fix.
The Mob4Hire site/process is still beta and a bit clunky and ambiguous in places. However, I think Mob4Hire may have something useful here if they evolve the service based on developer and tester feedback.
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I seem to be going through a phase where many people are emailing asking for specific market statistics. Most of the requests are very specialised and there certainly isn’t any existing information out there that I can point to.
The statistics I have been asked about are required for research papers or business plans. There’s a big problem here. Without statistics, research papers and new products are less likely to happen.
The network operators have access to the majority of the statistics but don’t make any of it public, presumably for reasons of business (and in some cases end-user) confidentiality. Also, I suspect the kind of specialised information that people want, isn’t even collected by network operators as it’s not part of their day-to-day operations.
On a more positive note, I guess the increase in the number of people asking me for this information is a measure of the increase in the number of people considering mobile related activities.
There’s an interesting article ‘Fragmentation is the enemy of innovation‘ on the MEX blog - especially interesting for me as I am quoted in it.
I also tend to think Flash Lite’s new zero cost licensing has come too late - I criticised Flash Lite licensing in 2005. As an aside, Adobe’s existing shipped 500m licenses are mainly for early functionally deficient versions of Flash Lite so these volumes mean nothing.
Even though the licenses are now free to phone OEMs, integrating Flash Lite into a phone isn’t a zero cost option and it requires development and possibly better hardware (more ROM). As we have seen with the current iPhone, it may not be considered to be viable.
When users have more capable mobile browsers, they expect to be able to view Flash Content. Flash content found on the web, can’t be played in Flash Lite so phone OEMs will question whether Flash Lite is really worth including.
I currently don’t see Flash Lite as the predominant future development platform. We need something new, non-proprietary, possibly more web technology based, to bridge across all development platforms.
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If you live in the UK, there some some great deals on 3 at the moment.
Firstly, they are offering the Skypephone for only £39.99. I reviewed this innovative phone last October. Earlier this year I spoke to someone involved with the Skypephone launch at 3 who, without specifying actual numbers, said that 3 has been very pleased with the response to the Skypephone and sales have exceeded initial expectations.
Secondly, today 3 have reduced the price of their USB broadband dongles to £49.99 (12 month contract) and free on longer contracts. There’s also half price rental for existing 3 customers so it’s possible to get a dongle for only £5/month.
It’s amazing that 3 has done a U-Turn in such a short time. Only a few years ago, you couldn’t even access the Internet from a 3 phone. It was the tightest ‘closed garden’ in the World and it wasn’t possible to use connected third party services or connected applications.
Maybe 3’s new openness, innovation and competitive pricing has something to do with it’s desparate need to start making consistent profits.
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