Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily very long.
blog
Phones are consumer electronics...
Many people didn’t think the iPhone would be a success. Myself included. Or rather, I thought it would
Part of the problem with the iPhone is the architecture they have to use to keep the cost down and to avoid doing a deal with Qualcomm. So you've the radio modem sitting separately to the application processor. This isn't just a plumbing nightmare but leads to huge bottlenecks in internal communication around the phone itself. Add in the "extra" fun of AT&Ts network and you've a perfect storm for a bad experience.
But, regardless of the short comings, the dropped calls, the hung data stack, the weird battery issues, it's a lovely piece of kit and I like mine. But the thing is, it's a piece of consumer electronics and a short shelf life one at that. Even with 2 year contracts phones get swapped out and what's hot now, hasn't proven to be a guide for what's hot in a year, let alone two. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola have all had their spots as top selling "shiny" providers - Apple is having their run at the moment but drawing any conclusions from that, or, for that matter, drawing a linear upward curve of sales is a huge mistake in the phone business.
Which, via a roundabout route, brings me to my point.
Don't define your strategy around the current shiny consumer must have - because consumers are fickle and will change their minds. Sure, Apple will have a die hard fan core of users, but that isn't necessarily the market you are going to be needing next year, or even now.
We've been working with Samsung on the BADA platform. BADA is a real gamble. It's YAMOS (Yet Another Mobile Operating System) running on Linux with a C++ application layer. But that's not the thing which interests me. The Samsung Wave, the first BADA phone is shiny. It's actually a lovely piece of kit. Great screen, amazing camera, simple and clean UI, and, more importantly, it's cheap. On Vodafone in the UK they're offering them free with a 25GBP a month contract. Oh, and it runs apps…
Samsung want to sell 20M units this year. And, with the quality of the device, the scale of Samsung and price point - they probably will. Or, to put it another way - they're planning to ship in 6 months more than Apple shipped in 2008.
The App market is changing as smarter phones work themselves into the market place previously only served by fairly crappy Java based games. That's a potential game changing and are you ready for it?
Building that 1st iPhone app might have been easy. The 2nd generation one, after you realized what you wanted, probably was too. The 3rd one might be becoming an irritation. What's the plan for all the other platforms that will be out there in millions of teenage hands, or their parents - the people who wouldn't spring for an iPhone but will for a Wave?
It's worth thinking about.
For my next trick I'll also show why Web Apps really aren't the way to go either :)
Mobile, Retail and Brand Presence
We had a meeting with a potential customer today where the topic was a retail application.
We certainly see that there are great retail uses for Viafo's technology in that sector but a lot of interesting questions came up as part of the discussion.
The core of the discussion was what are the uses for mobile apps for retail brands?
It was particularly interesting to have the discussion with somebody who has been given responsibility for mobile, but fully admitted to never having downloaded an application, not used Twitter, never heard of Foursquare and only occasionally had a look at Facebook.
When you're in the heart of the mobile and web business you tend to get an extremely blinkered view of the technologies in play. We see this more often in discussions with customers about the iPhone - I'll blog on that another time.
So the interesting thing to come out of this discussion is what do you offer to somebody who at a fundamental level is having to design a service for people unlike themselves?
Now, I don't see this as too much of a challenge, even accepting that the concept of brand mobilization is quite new, there are several pretty universal marketing issues you should be addressing without even dealing with the thorny issue of whether or not you want your mobile app to be used for purchase.
Tackling that for a moment: do you want people to be able to buy with your mobile app? I'd suggest it depends on your business - the data is sparse at the moment but I'm guessing we'll see a split around impulse and small purchases (movie tickets, drinks, vouchers) versus large items (clothing, cars, electronics) - that might be my age showing but I can't see myself spending any real time on the phone buying some shoes - to be fair, I don't do all that much on the PC either.
Anyway, that's also another entire post.
Where I really see mobile and retail coming into their own is in driving traffic and mind-share - not just to your bricks and mortar store but to the web side too.
So, what does that mean in practice?
Firstly, integrated Social Networking - and this isn’t just about having Twitter or Facebook or Foursquare hooks into your mobile app, but also having those cross-linked into your web and general social networking strategy. If you're a retailer this means having a global AND local strategy - who Tweets for your brand? Do you stores have individual or managed online identities? How do you control your brand in there? It's a powerful thing to have "From the XXX App" on Twitter, less so if it's somebody mouthing off.
Secondly, manage your Social Networking - true story - I recently had an issue with Qwest over our Internet Connection. The helpdesk had been a time wasting joke. I tweeted about my experience and had an @message from a Qwest Rep who fixed the problem - THAT is brand management. If you want help with that, we can hook you up.
Thirdly, location, location, location - manage and make use of search - build location services into apps. Drive physical traffic. Make use of Foursquare - I don't myself but millions do and if you're offering freebies to the Mayor of somewhere, it's worthwhile being ready for that.
Fourth: Brochureware - see how far this is down the list? It's actually not the thing that makes things sticky - it's a by product of doing the rest of the app right. Make sure that these are cross-linked back to your website and to your prospects web accounts. Let them share information. They find a Widget they like online at work - make sure they can have that image on their phone when they use the app to find the store.
That way they can use their Foursquare "Mayor" discount and Tweet about how you rock.
Obviously, I'm blowing our horn, because this is the area that we designed Viafo to operate in. However, regardless of who or how you do it, an integrated mobile, web, store strategy is a must for retail and brands - regardless of who you get to do the work.
More Changes Coming - BADA!
We'll be making a more formal announcement about our work for our new customer, Samsung, later in June when we've delivered the solutions they taking from us. We're very excited to be working on the BADA platform. Our first impressions are extremely good, great screen, good camera, amazing performance. We're providing ViaNewz, ViaSearchz and a new Travel Application which we'll also be announcing.
We're also working on getting the website finished properly, which some of you might say is about time too... but we keep having customer projects which get in the way.
News! Or Should I Say NEWZ!
Well, in addition to landing an exciting new customer - I can't say who yet but it's a big one. We're ready to go public on the Newz Reader and the Local Search App. Both will be available for Windows Mobile 5.x/6.x and soon other platforms.
For now this is a free Beta so you can download and use the interface. There's some features coming, including OPML import. But you can use the interface to manage RSS feeds, Podcasts and Twitter with direct interaction between the web interface and the client.
We're also launching our Search app - a simple to use local search app. Simply set your favorite searches up on the web and everytime you sync the client you are given the 4 or 8 closest hits to your location.
We're working on the iPhone, Android and Widget releases right now.
Please give 'em a whirl.
Watch this Space: #ctia
As I've mentioned I'm off to CTIA tomorrow morning at a suitably unpleasant hour. Also, for my standards, my schedule is relatively light, which means that I have some space left for meetings in the mornings and early(ish) afternoon - if anybody wants to meet.
We hope to make some great announcements next week but it's still 50/50 at the moment. We hope to be able to discuss an exciting new customer AND new platform deal, and also to formally launch our News and Search appz in public beta.
However, we're still working on the last minute bits of the code before we go live. Fingers crossed though!
CTIA will, however, mark the end of the Q1 silly season, which means we might be able to settle down and focus on some other aspects of the business as we enter Q2. Again, that will mean a slew of new announcements as we head into June.
What is it with mobile/tech and Q1?
There's a lot of activity in Q1 for the mobile industry, in fact, had I had the money and the inclination, I could probably have been on the road every week for the last 12 without a break. Even if I'd limited myself to the headline events, there's: CES, Mobile World Congress, SXSW, Mix and CTIA - that's ignoring CeBIT and a bunch of other minor shows and events I was invited to.
For a startup this is a tricky juggling act. Especially after many years of travelling on somebody else's budget. Finding money for yourself is somewhat scary when you look at 2 Vegas Tradeshows and a European one in the same quarter.
We've managed it, and we're hoping to make some great announcements around then too, so keep an eye on the site/blog. We're working on our key product launches and a new demo system which should show our technology off extremely well.
Getting There - Web Side...
I mentioned a while ago that writing copy for what we do was like looking at the screen until your eyes bleed. Hopefully my eyes will be starting heal up now as we're getting close to completing a lot of our V1/Beta messages.
I've had the complaint a few times now that people get what we do when they see if but struggle from the website. We're planning to add some informational videos shortly with working demos of our technology. But in the meantime we've been busy putting together a better series of explanations for the technology and just how it helps put solutions out there.
We'll probably write up a short case study of our 72 hour app development cycle for the Mix10 Application too.
Anyway, we still are preparing for CTIA so must be going.
CTIA - Meetings
Informational update.
We're going to be at CTIA from Monday to Thursday next week. Monday is already booked up as is Tuesday afternoon.
I'm still open Tuesday morning and all day Wednesday for meetings - if you want to catch up, then let me know.
We're hoping to put some news out about a big new customer next week.
We have an Appz for that...
It's been an interesting weekend as we fiddled with the Mix10 Appz and had a think about what it is we had done with it. We've had some positive feedback from a couple of trial users who liked the general approach and were extremely impressed with the speed at which we'd put the complete application together.
The question they asked, and I suppose one we need to think about is what we do with that?
Our business goals are clear, we still intend to license the technology to third parties and provide hosted solutions for some of our services. However, the tactical appz like the MWC App and the Mix App have given us a boost in the web traffic, if nothing else. To whit, as of this morning the Viafo website has had as much traffic as our previous record breaking month...
With this in mind I think we'll do a CTIA app - it's in keeping with ViaEventz anyway. But what else should we do? The World Cup (Soccer, you know the one that practically everybody in the world plays) is coming up in June - should we build an app for that and have it on our main platforms, which should, by then, include WinMo, Bada, iPhone and Android? Or does that become a low revenue time sink for us?
To be honest, I don't know at the moment. I'll let you know when we make the decision.
CTIA Prep
In a little over a week it'll be time for one of the big events of the North American Telecoms calendar, the early CTIA event.
We're thinking of doing another App "for that" - at least for WinMo - we'll be aiming to have our iPhone demo to show then, but it's touch and go at the moment.
At the very least we're intending to launch our first 2 apps, ViaNewz and ViaSearchz, and also probably, announce our second significant customer deal and the target platform.
As always, if you want to meet, let me know.
Mix10 Appz: Day 4 - Beta/Alpha Delivery
Key features and stuff we did get done:
- Windows Mobile 5.x, 6.x Touch and Non-Touch Support
- Integrated with the speaker profiles and schedule
- Maps coming over the weekend
- Integrates to your Twitter Account and provides a #mix10 Twitter feed
- Integrated Mix10 RSS feeds plus slots for 5 of your own relevant RSS feeds
- Follow Users for the Twitter #mix10 feed feature and Follow Speakers - where they've registered a twitter handle
- We might add local search for Las Vegas too... but that's the point at which the CTO starts kicking me...
There are a couple of things we've spotted which are Windows Mobile related. If the device is low on system memory we've seen the initial, "large" sync failing - there's not a lot we can do about WinMo memory management but if you do get a "ViaStkz failed error" then try a reboot to clear the memory out and retry. And whinge at somebody from WinMo when you see them at Mix ;)
Feedback will be useful, but remember this was a Quick and Dirty attempt to build a working and useful app from a set of backend data sources in a couple of days. I hope you enjoy it!
Mix10 Appz: Day 3
Scene: INT - Seattle Coffee Shop - Day
CEO and CTO of exciting startup are sitting having a progress review over a pair of coffees. The coffee shop is full of people in fleeces and outdoor wear and working on laptops.
CTO: ... and you OFFERED X?
CEO: Yes, the code's written it's just cut and paste isn't it?
CTO Er... well... er... yes, sort of but not quite... I mean it will be but I needed to get X,Y,Z done first and rolled up into the main...
CEO's eyes are glazing over at this stage.
CEO: Ok, ok, just get through it quickly and then you can get onto the next client, which I know you want to.
CTO: Except you just got that new project in and...
CEO waves hands...
CEO: Ok, ok... fine, anyway I've a couple of busy weeks ahead and we need the demos, and then I'm off to CTIA for a week.
CTO: Great... with any luck you can stop adding new requirements....
SCENE
Well, it wasn't quite that bad. But apparently we're getting close :)
Mix10 Appz: Day 2
Quick update on the Mix10 App we're building. We've got the features agreed and we've pretty much sourced all the content to add. The goal of our solution is to make building mobile applications like this, especially those for events, really easy.
The tricky part, at least for us, is all on the back end of the app. So we've been locked down over the course of the day working out how we can extract the schedule and attendee data from the online side of things. We've got that sorted today, so we should have the application built for tomorrow... and, I'll be honest, if we can show 48 hours from thinking about the mobile app, to the app being ready for download, complete with the web interface built... well... then I'll be a happy CEO.
I'll check in tomorrow to see if we've got everything done and a link to the app... Shame we're not even going - but we have to pick our events carefully at the moment and we're already off to Vegas later in the month.
Maybe next year... especially if somebody at Microsoft pays.
The Bravado of the Start Up CEO
Coming from a BizDev background with just enough technical understanding to be dangerous gives me the fun without the object horror associated with having to do things... at least until I have to micro-manage the deadline :)
Actually, I'm kidding a little. But it does mean I get to have insane ideas and then act on them while dumping most of the hard work onto other people, and today I've had a good one. It comes from a post from a friend who is one of the world's few remaining Windows Mobile users who notes that the apps for Mix seem to be iPhone focused. Highly amusing when you read that one of the big things for Mix will be a phone to beat the iPhone.
Anyway, this got me thinking about a challenge for us. There is a Mix App out there for the event on iPhone - why don't we see if we can put something our using our technology which matches some of the iPhone App functionality using our ViaEventz stuff and see if we can get it out there before the event and with some interactive and dazzling functionality...
I've not spoken to the CTO yet, but I know he loves a challenge...
I'll get back to you later...
Looking at the screen until your eyes bleed...
I'm paraphrasing Douglas Adams with this blog title, but it's roughly what he said about the process of writing. He wasn't, by all accounts, a natural author. He liked deadlines though, apparently he liked the wooshing noise they made as they went past.
Today I feel I am channeling my inner Douglas. I've been working on getting a lot of our messaging sorted and I've been getting a lot of help on this, hat tip to the fantastic team at The Lucid Way, but at the end of the day, a lot of this ends up on my desk and I've got to work through it.
PowerPoint and MarComs don't come particularly naturally to me. It's trite to use the phrase "I'm a people person" but the reality is, I much prefer telling our story than I do trying to write it down. Especially if we get to have that conversation over a coffee or, ideally, a more adult beverage... however, the reality is, the stuff needs to get down on paper/PPT and we need to get it out there. So, here I sit writing a Blog Post rather than staring at the monitor until my eyeballs do, indeed, start bleeding.
It's not enough that I've 3-4 hot prospects waiting to see the stuff, it's not enough that we're getting real traction and have, albeit a small number, of people trying to give us cash - it's still hard to nail everything down into an easy form...
So, this last week I've also been indulging in any other number of necessary, horrible, but in my eyes preferable CEO type activities. I've had a bunch of new conversations, I've set up countless interesting meetings, we've sorted out the next quarter of dev activities, I've sorted out the insane admin over-head that WA impose on small business, I've ALMOST tidied the office... and still... sitting there, like the overdue library book, are the 3 presentations I owe people...
*sigh*
I'd better get back to them. I see a glass of wine in my future...
To Patent or Not To Patent That Is the Question
A few months ago we took the decision not to patent one of the features of our technology. We were concerned about the cost of doing so and the nature of software patents in general. We haven't launched that particular feature set yet so the window isn't, in theory, closed.
Over the last few weeks we've had cause to reconsider this due to the current crop of Patent insanity, which has led me to start thinking along, if you can't beat 'em, join them 'em lines.
I am extremely concerned about what I'm seeing in terms of what is being granted as patents at the moment because I think it's calling into question what a software patent is and actually should be. There's two areas here. There's the stuff that Apple and Nokia are fighting over, which involves quite a lot of hard arsed technical radio and phone stuff that, frankly, Apple are screwed over. If Qualcomm, a company whose legal department is actually a profitable P&L, couldn't beat Nokia at this game, I suspect that Apple might find themselves feeling like Imperial Japan post-Pearl Harbour.
The second area is Apple's next counter punch which is the bucket of infringements they've slapped HTC with. This is the area, along with Facebook's "news feed" patent that leave me feeling that things have got silly.
Firstly, let me caveat the rest of this comment with the issue that I'm not a lawyer and nor do I play one on TV. This is just my opinion based on the last decade spent in the mobile industry and dealing directly with IP related issues with some of the players.
A lot of the items that Apple has hit HTC with are actually features of software that HTC have licensed. I'm not sure about Google's license, I've not read it closely enough. However, I have read the WinMo license and there's a fair degree of protection against patent infringement in there. Apple must be aware of this so HTC is a proxy in a war with MS and Google. While most companies might find this uncomfortable, especially small ones, I think Apple is underestimating HTC. They're a self made Taiwanese OEM - the first of the ODMs to really make a transition to OEMhood. They're also from a nation that's spent 60 years facing off against a nuclear capable superpower. HTC are a not exactly a push over to deal with - believe me, you should try selling to them.
So, have HTC infringed anything by using software that's been licensed to them? And do UI features or presentation issues (like slide/gesture to unlock) represent an actual invention?
Which brings me back to the News Feed and a patent that scares the hell out of me - is this actually something you can defend?
Anyway - I've slowly been coming around to deciding that yes, we probably should patent the next feature we've been working on because we actually think it's novel and new. Of course, should Apple/Nokia/MS/Qualcomm/Facebook or WHOEVER decide that its something they already did or want to do, we're probably screwed anyway...
And that kind of impact on business and innovation is exactly what I thought patents were invented to prevent.
Back in the saddle...
Mobile World Congress was it's usual mad-house, spoiled slightly by the inclemant temperatures this time around. Freezing rain, cold winds and grey skies aren't a typical feature of Barcelona at this time of year and it was a little disappointing.
Still, we had an excellent show and gained lots of good traction. There's also a lot going on at the moment and we've some exciting new product annoucements we'll be making shortly along with, we hope, a couple of new customer annoucements.
I'm also working on some other mobile related Blog posts which fit into some subjects that are on all our minds at the moment. The first one will be some thoughts on what the Facebook and Apple patent annoucements and spats are about.
Anyway, it seems to be quite spinglike here in Seattle so we'll continue to get the website updated and our new range of services in place while we can enjoy the weather.
Off to Barcelona we go...
One of the funniest sitcoms in history, at least in my opinion, was the incredibly short lived but hysterically funny Fawlty Towers. A tour-de-force by John Cleese as a minor hotel owner in a seaside town in the South West of England. If you haven't seen it, stop reading and go and find it.
One of the minor characters is Manuel, an unfortunate soul working for Cleese's horrendous Basil Fawlty. Nothing Manuel does is right even when Basil is at fault, and every infraction is blamed simply on the fact that Manuel is from Barcelona.
Well, in a few days pretty much every body in the mobile industry will be in Barcelona too. It's the annual GSM Association conference there. This will be my 10th year and the second time I'm going as part of a new company, and the first time as CEO. It's an amazing event - 50,000+ people crowded into the old Olympic center displaying and selling the leading in mobile technologies. We'll be there, exhibiting at the Alcatel Lucent stand in Hall 7. I'll post more on that tomorrow.
Here I wanted to focus on what I'm expecting to see or hoping to...
- Windows Phone 7 - having developed our V1 solution on Windows Mobile, I feel that, out of loyalty I should be excited about that. But I feel like I've been invited to the ball once too often by MS and they've never actually taken me. Everybody I know at Microsoft tells me how wonderful it is, but I still haven't seen evidence of this. I'm still not convinced we'll see anything other than canned demos even now
- Apps! Lots and lots of apps. I'm on record as not being persuaded by the concept of Browser based services for mobile phones and I think Apple has, in a way, locked the mindshare of the phone using community into the app in the way that SMS has for messaging. Let's be honest here. Nobody in their right mind would send 140 character messages at $0.25 a message, but we all do, even though we have email. Why? Because it works. I think Apps will be the same
- Location and Augmented Reality - I'm hoping to see a lot of this. Why? Because it's cool
I intend to blog through the event, WiFi permitting!
Testing the Squarespace App
It's a nice app and it would be interesting to see if they have an API that we could use to integrate with Viafo.
It will make a nice Blogging tool for MWC.