Posts Tagged ‘apps’
Mobile apps: The first apps store has been opened by Yulong Computer for TD-SCDMA
June 22nd, 2009 | 
Author: The store, called Coolmart, currently has about 200 movies, songs and programs such as games either developed or purchased by southern China-based Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific, Gu Yong, the company’s marketing director, said by phone Thursday.
Only one phone, the company’s Coolpad N900 released this month, can currently access the store, said Gu. That touchscreen handset, which costs almost 6,000 yuan (US$880), supports 3G on the network run by carrier China Telecom, Gu said.
All of the applications are currently free, and Yulong hopes the store will attract more buyers to its high-end phones, Gu said. Yulong may eventually seek revenue from the store by charging for some downloads, he said. It may also consider splitting revenue with developers, who are free to upload their own applications to the store, Gu said.
Yulong will release up to five more handsets that can access the store this year, including phones that use China’s other two 3G networks, he said.
China Mobile, which is expanding a network based on China’s domestically developed 3G standard, aims to open its own application store this year. The world’s largest mobile carrier is one of many companies that hopes to emulate the success of the Apple’s App Store, which hit one billion downloads in just nine months and offers tens of thousands of applications for the iPhone.
Nokia opened its own application download platform last month. Google’s Android platform offers an application store as well, and Sun this month opened a test version of its store for Java program downloads.
Yulong created its application store to take advantage of 3G’s roll-out in China, which is letting mobile users do more on the Internet, Gu said.
UK: CIOs consider there is no place for iPhone in enterprises
In the latest silicon.com CIO Jury, IT chiefs were asked whether they’re planning to offer Apple’s touchscreen device as part of their range of corporate mobile phones – and the vast majority of IT chiefs said they are not.
Tech chiefs dismissed the iPhone option for a variety of reasons ranging from the fact it’s only available from a single mobile provider, to poor battery life and even a fear of appearing profligate.
Only two of the 12 IT chiefs were willing to give it a vote of corporate confidence.
The iPhone battery life simply doesn’t compare to that of a BlackBerry and speed of use as a mobile email tool still doesn’t compare.
– Gavin Megnauth, director of operations & group IT, Morgan Hunt
However, the remaining 10 members of the CIO Jury are not heading to Cupertino – at least, not yet.
Gavin Megnauth, director of operations & group IT for recruiter Morgan Hunt, said although the iPhone has its attractions there are still big drawbacks to the device.
“While there is clearly some momentum to accept iPhones as a corporate tool we won’t be adopting at this juncture. The iPhone battery life simply doesn’t compare to that of a BlackBerry and speed of use as a mobile email tool still doesn’t compare,” he said.
“Our research suggests that companies adopting the iPhone are the sort of companies where the PDA is an executive status symbol rather than a workhorse to genuinely aid the productivity of staff,” he added.
There are also too many potential iPhone ‘cons’ for David Suthers, CIO of Masterlease: “High cost of ownership, lock-in to O2 and potential abuse of company resources via iTunes would be my main reasons [against it],” he said.
For Rob Neil, head of ICT and customer services at Ashford Borough Council, the main reason to avoid the iPhone is the fact it’s not available from the Council’s corporate mobile telephony provider.
However, he added that there could also be issues around the perception of the device: “Whilst it is undoubtedly a fine email and mobile internet client, with useful GPS apps, I can just see the headlines saying ‘council gives free iPod to staff’.”
Meanwhile Dr Ben Booth, global chief technology officer for Ipsos, believes security is still a bugbear. “The new model boasts lots more consumer-oriented features but (as far as I can see from the press releases) the basic security weaknesses have not been addressed,” he said.
But the iPhone’s charms are clearly hard at work elsewhere. While it’s “not yet” on the menu at ITN, Ian Auger, head of IT & communications, said: “It is becoming more attractive though.”
The Apple mobile is also turning heads at Sodexo – albeit as non-corporate devices. Kevin Fitzpatrick, CIO, Northern Europe, said the company offers BlackBerrys for “enhanced functionality/mobility users” and standard mobiles for the majority of staff but a “large number of colleagues” use iPhones as personal devices. It has no plans to offer corporate iPhones however.
One company already offering iPhones as corporate devices is Harvey Nash. “We already provision the device to senior sales people and see the new version as offering an increased set of capabilities/capacity to widen this pool even further,” Alastair Behenna, CIO at the recruiter, said.
Another iPhone fan is Mike Roberts, IT director of The London Clinic, who spoke up for the iPhone’s Outlook connectivity skills. “We use BlackBerry now and the iPhone offers better connectivity with Outlook,” he said.
When polled about offering the iPhone as a corporate device back in 2007, 11 out of 12 CIO Jury members then said they had no plans to do so, suggesting Apple’s hardware has made a degree of limited progress in infiltrating the business world.
Posted in Communications | 
Tags: apple, apps, ash, Battery, blog, blogs, business, Communications, Customer Service, ford, Free, gps, Hardware, headlines, Internet, iphone, Mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, pda, research, Technology, world | 
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Mobile Apps: China Mobile seeks 50% of revenues from Apps sold at its store
“China Mobile wants at least 50% of the revenues and the rest goes to the developer,” a source from Shanghai Mobile, a China Mobile subsidiary, told TelecomAsia.net.
By contrast, Apple, Android and Microsoft all take just a 30% cut.
The Mobile Market is now being developed by the China Mobile-controlled Aspire Technologies and China Mobile’s Guangdong branch, the source said.
It is likely to go live in September, almost certainly making it the world’s first carrier-operated storefront. UK-based Vodafone has planned to open a store by year-end.
The Mobile Market will allow developers to post apps for all handset OS except the iPhone. It will be accessible from both GSM and TD-SCDMA phones.
Baoding-based Zhu Lianxing, who leads a team named “139.ME” to develop iPhone apps, said the group would submit two Window Mobile apps – one that provides driver’s license practice tests and the Love Forecast, a personal ovulation calendar.
Zhu said the biggest challenge for China Mobile would be to provide a consistent user experience across different phone models and OSes.
“If we develop an app for Apple, it runs on both the iPhone and the iPod touch. Now we have to develop one app for each OS,” he said.
Posted in Communications |
Tags: apple, apps, blog, blogs, developers, iphone, microsoft, Mobile, world |
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Mobile advertising: Vodafone is taking steps to grow what has been a small part of its business
A new mobile online store is part of Vodafone’s ad strategy. So are location-based advertising and text-messaging ad formats.
Still, the U.K.-based carrier knows wireless firms have talked up advertising for years, and the market hasn’t taken off.
“There’s clearly monetization potential,” Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We need to create the conditions for having this monetization really happen.
“Will it be big big for us in the early days? No. But it is important to create the conditions and to make the pie bigger and bigger.”
Rise Of A New Medium
Colao ran Italian media group RCS for two years before rejoining Vodafone in 2008 as CEO. Though wireless firms have had trouble selling ads, some trends work in the industry’s favor, Colao says.
“At the end of the day it’s about the time people dedicate to using a medium,” he said. “It used to be six hours per day of television and one hour per day of newspapers. Now time is moving to new media. There’s a huge amount of time that people spend each day looking at the screen of their mobile device.”
By year-end, Vodafone plans to open an online store where mobile phone users can download games and other software applications, aiming to duplicate the success of Apple . IPhone users have downloaded more than 1 billion applications.
Vodafone would share the application revenue with the software programs’ developers. It plans to keep 30% of sales, the same share as Apple. Many mobile applications are free, however, and the revenue from such a business, even for Apple, likely is modest.
Ads In Apps
Vodafone also hopes to generate dollars from ads that are inserted within some applications. Many advertisers have created branded applications for the iPhone or have placed ads within applications.
“Applications are going to play a role (in advertising),” Colao said. “The creativity of the applications developers will determine the success.”
Vodafone is one of several firms opening their own online stores to sell mobile applications. Others include Nokia (NYSE:NOK – News), Microsoft and Google .
Wireless firms once had a stranglehold on content, steering users seeking applications only to providers approved by the carriers. With the introduction of its iPhone in 2007, Apple had the clout to change that game.
It’s not clear wireless firms can reassert themselves with online stores, says Steven Hartley, an analyst at market research firm Ovum.
“The genie is out of the bottle in the applications game,” he said.
Vodafone, though, has a key asset in its bid to build its applications store. It has software that can pinpoint 20s users’ locations, and it will share that with applications developers. That could lead to more applications that let users find the nearby restaurant, gas station and so on.
Vodafone bought Swedish global positioning firm Wayfinder in December for $30 million in order to boost its location-based ad platform.
Privacy issues have been a hurdle to location-based advertising. Mobile users must “opt-in” to get ads.
Another avenue Vodafone plans to use to drive ads is its “Vodafone Live” data portal, which streams video. Colao says mobile TV will be a revenue generator, though such services so far have lagged forecasts.
Hartley says Vodafone could get a boost as it expands the Vodafone Live platform into more emerging markets.
The wireless carrier, which doesn’t disclose its ad revenue, is experimenting with other models, and it has introduced mobile ads in 18 markets. Vodafone says a new mobile Internet browser it is developing could open up ad opportunities.
‘Please Call Me’
Vodafone plans to expand a text-messaging ad service, called “Please call me,” to more markets this year. Developed by Vodafone’s South African subsidiary, Vodacom, the service lets prepay customers send a free, ad-funded text message to someone asking them to call back. It targets users who are running low on their minutes.
The “Please call me” service already is available in Spain, Egypt, and the Czech Republic. India will be among the next markets to get the service.
Vodafone is testing other ad formats in Ireland, New Zealand, Turkey and other markets. One offers customers points they can redeem for airtime, ring tones and other items if they agree to get ad-supported text messages or other marketing promotions.
Posted in Communications |
Tags: Advertising, apple, application, apps, blog, blogs, business, developers, Free, game, Games, google, Internet, iphone, Marketing, microsoft, Mobile, mobile device, mobile phone, nokia, online, Online Stores, research, rim, Software, Wireless, world |
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USA: Mobile search growing strongly for information on maps, movies, business directories or restaurants
The online research firm’s latest data shows that the number of people who sought local information on a mobile device grew 51 percent from March 2008 to March 2009. The study defines “local content” as “searching for information on maps, movies, business directories or restaurants.”
Furthermore, the mobile browser is the leading access method for seeking local information, with 20.7 million users in March 2009, up 34 percent versus year ago, according to comScore.
However, the strongest growth in the category is coming from downloaded applications, which grew 83 percent versus year ago, followed by SMS at 72 percent, according to comScore.
Yet, despite the attention mobile applications have received from developers, carriers and device makers, they remain the least-popular access mode for mobile access of local information, with 11.3 million users in March.
SMS rates a bit ahead of mobile apps in providing local information with 11.7 million users.
Overwhelmingly, though, the preferred mode to access local content remains the mobile browser.
“Given the explosion in application stores and associated marketing efforts, along with the growth in mobile phones using faster data networks, it would not be surprising within the next six months to see the number of people using downloadable applications surpass SMS for the accessing of local information via mobile devices,” Serge Matta, a senior vice president at comScore, said in a statement.
Among the various local content categories, the number of people accessing online directories has seen the greatest increase during the past year, at 73 percent, followed by restaurants at 70 percent, maps with 63 percent, and movies with 60 percent.
Local search’s increasing role in mobile is prompting local search-focused Internet brands to boost development of mobile content.
AT&T Interactive, for example, recently expanded its YellowPages.com online experience across several mobile platforms.
“We’re focused on extending the YellowPages.com experience to mobile through our downloadable apps, SMS search and mobile Web apps,” Matt Crowley, chief marketing officer of AT&T Interactive, said in a statement. “In addition, we power local search for AT&T’s MEdiaNet portal and have our YP.COM mobile client preinstalled on capable AT&T smart and feature phones. As a result of this strategy, we’ve seen our reach extended by 6 percent for our combined online and mobile unique web visitor audience.”
Local search brands seeking to capitalize on the trend are looking to extend consumer reach and attract ad dollars through both mobile-optimized Web sites and mobile applications. In addition to YellowPages.com, Idearc’s Superpages, R.H. Donnelley’s DexKnows and Yellowbook’s Yellowbook.com have all released iPhone applications within the last six months.
Driving growth in smartphones
News of local mobile search as an emerging trend comes at a time when the growth of the smartphone market is impacting the mobile market on all fronts.
The latest data out today from the Yankee Group says 41 percent of consumers are likely to purchase a smartphone as their next mobile device, with smartphones comprising 38 percent of all handsets by 2013.
As a result of growing smartphone sales, the mobile market is experiencing unprecedented competition. Most recently, the industry has seen signature upgrades of mobile operating systems and releases of the Apple iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre, while a Storm 2 is expected from RIM, as well as Android handsets from Samsung, HTC, Acer and Motorola.
The success of the smartphone market amid a wider economic slump is also spawning a burgeoning mobile advertising, mobile applications and mobile commerce industry.
Meanwhile, wireless carriers are gunning to fill out their portfolios with exclusive deals for key smartphones while reassessing their relationships with handset makers.
“Traditionally, carriers have had the upper hand when working with device manufacturers to bring a new smartphone to market, but the power dynamics are shifting,” according to the Yankee Group report. “With more competitive entrants, tighter budgets and increased consumer expectations, OEMs and operators need to work together, on equal ground, to thrive.”
Posted in Communications |
Tags: Advertising, apple, application, apps, Audi, blog, blogs, budget, business, consumers, developers, information, Internet, iphone, Marketing, Mobile, mobile content, mobile device, mobile devices, mobile phone, mobile phones, Network, online, Operating Systems, research, rim, smartphone, sms, system, upgrade, Wireless |
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