A little while ago I wrote a post on one of my pet subjects, Operator Innovation. I decried the total lack of innovation in messaging. I was particularly annoyed that, on the whole, operators hadn’t bothered doing anything with text messages and voicemail. Why is it LIMITED to my sodding handset and your rubbish voicemail system, I remember asking.

Why can’t I get my SMS on whatever phone I want? Why can’t I see my MMS online or wherever I wish?

Well, I’m delighted to report that AT&T has taken my screams to heart and actually implemented AT&T Messages. Yes, they’ve done it.

Do not adjust your sets.

Seriously.

Chris over at TechCrunch wrote about this yesterday (“AT&T Messages moves your conversations to the cloud“).

Quite simply, AT&T has taken your text messages, picture messages, voicemail and missed call register and stuck it all in an online portal.

It looks ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!

Let me stick in some pictures to get the juices flowing…

You can use the online portal, or of course you can use the app. Right now it’s only available on Android but Craig reports the iOS version is coming shortly. There will also be a tablet version by the ‘fall of 2011′. So, sometime soon.

Here’s a bit of text from the service FAQ:

AT&T Messages is an application that lets you view, send, and receive texts, calls, voicemail messages, and voice text messages from a single inbox. Messages seamlessly sync in the cloud and are easily accessed from your Android smartphone, Android tablet, or computer. All your communications are organized by person and sorted by when you receive them. Messages sent from AT&T Messages will appear on the Web or on your tablet as if they were sent from your Android smartphone.

AT&T Messages integrates with AT&T Address Book so that all your contacts are available to your phone and your computer. AT&T Address Book may not be available for all devices.

Genius. This is enough to definitely get me to change operator. I bet you react in a similar way. I particularly like this observation from Chris’ Techcrunch post:

Their cloud communications concept sounds quite a bit like the messaging half of Google Voice, but AT&T Messages has a few distinct advantages. One big one is the fact that it integrates with your existing AT&T phone number without any extra legwork. Any message sent to an existing AT&T number gets pushed into the cloud, where it’s viewable from any other compatible device.

It’s all about the phone number, still.

This is a key USP for the operator. Still.

Utterly brilliant.

I’m delighted to see a good level of innovation from AT&T. It really does kick the shit out of the bollocks offerings from the mobile operators here in Europe. Vodafone? Where are you?

I know the team at o2 Innovation have some stuff in the bag. Come on guys — forward this to the dithering executive in charge of holding things back and tell him or her to either resign or get off the sodding fence and let you get the stuff out to market.

Interestingly, I think France Telecom are nicely positioned — through their Orange Vallee efforts — to deliver a response to this. I can very much see the Life Is Better On team (given appropriate access to the right FT APIs) deliver a beta version of this within weeks. Imagine ON: Voicefeed with your SMS, missed calls and MMS integrated beautifully? Nice.

But dear me Vodafone, come on!

You can find out more about the AT&T Foundry (their developer operation) here.

And you can read the official announcement on ‘Encore and AT&T Messages’ here.

I’m very excited to see what else the Foundry can deliver to market.

Bring it on!

Pradeep over at wmpoweruser.com has published an email that is being sent out to the (apparent) legions of developers jumping ship from WebOS to Windows. The email is from Brandon Watson, top man at Microsoft’s Windows Phone developer relations.

You have to hand it to Microsoft: They really do know what they’re doing when it comes to developers.

Here’s the first part of Brandon’s note:

First things first. Thank you so much for reaching out to the Windows Phone team to signal your interest in bringing your talents to our platform. To be honest, we didn’t expect this level of response, so we were caught a bit flatfooted. It took a few days (on the weekend) to pull all the mails together into one place to allow me to respond in a smart way and not retype every mail by hand. Consider this a first step in building a relationship with the Windows Phone team. We are psyched to have you aboard and to see what your imagination can do on the Windows Phone canvas. Read on

Brandon goes on to list out the names and email addresses of every single Windows Phone ‘mobile champ’ in a whole list of countries.

He also points out that free phones are available — something that, ultimately, any successful developer is going to want. I get the impression that if you can prove your credentials to your local champ, they’ll sort you out with a device or two.

It’s unclear how many WebOS developers there are flocking to Microsoft. Irrespective, it’s nice marketing from the Microsoft team. It’s continuing to get the word out. This is just what Microsoft needs at this point as Mango ships and new devices (particularly from Nokia) begin to step into the light.

You can find out more about developing for Windows Phone at create.msdn.com/.

Alas the opportunity has been snapped up by Canadian firm, Polar Mobile. Congratulations chaps.

The focus for Polar is obviously Windows Phone — and this news demonstrates Nokia isn’t hanging around. Microsoft has already made good progress getting content on their app stores, this will certainly keep things moving. There’s a lot more details via the link below.

Nokia Corp. is turning to Toronto-based app developer Polar Mobile Group Inc. to build more than 300 mobile apps for its current and future smart phones, as the world’s largest handset maker tries to regain relevance in the next-generation mobile device market.The deal, to be announced Wednesday, is one of the largest in Polar’s history. The first 50 apps, to be released in the next two months, will run on Nokia’s Symbian operating system, which powers several of its existing line of phones. Polar will also develop apps for the MeeGo platform.

via CTV News | Nokia picks Polar to build 300 mobile apps.

Charles Arthur over at The Guardian reports that some enterprising software patent owners have decided to have-a-go at mobile application developers that they fear might be infringing their intellectual property.

Charles quotes a few developers, including MIR favourite, Mr Simon Maddox, who are, I think it is fair to say, understandably running scared over the potential fallout.

Charles reports that Simon has taken the rather dramatic step of withdrawing all his applications from US app stores (on all platforms). Why? Well, he doesn’t want any problems.

I wouldn’t either.

If I was making a wicked living from my mobile apps, the last thing I need is some 800lb Gorilla arriving and demanding royalties. That would be a very bad day, especially since the moment I have to even think about the issue, it’ll cost me £300 per hour on legal fees. Yeah. No thanks.

Here’s one of the issues that’s giving folk the willies:

Meanwhile Kootol Software of Mumbai announced that it has sent a notice to Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, IBM, Research in Motion, LinkedIn, MySpace, Research in Motion and a number of other companies – including Iconfactory – claiming that they infringe US patent application 11/995,343 – “A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed” – which it said has also been applied for in India, Canada and Europe.

It says that patent it is seeking is an invention which “allows the user to publish and send messages using one way or two way messaging and by subscribing to posts of other users of a network. By indexing each message of each user the system provides real time search capabilities to users of the network in turn creating a unique form of communication.”

Yeah. I think it’s a pile of rubbish too.

An ‘invention’?

Oh come off if.

But let’s not get into the nitty gritty.

The last thing the big platforms need is for their developers to get cold feet and start panicking about getting sued. The marketplace dynamic relies on independent and small developers innovating the hell out of the rest of the market, running fast and responding swiftly to end-consumer needs. This is why there’s half-a-billion-trillion apps out there for iPhone. Everyone piled in. Everyone messed around. Some lucky developers found small niche markets for their products. Other even luckier ones got big very, very fast.

The key point is that the consumer was delighted. And the platform’s value grew and grew. This is the case with Apple and, to a lesser extent, the other platforms.

Can you imagine what would happen if Apple had 50% of apps removed from sale because of patent fears? This is somewhat conceivable.

One would imagine that patent holders would only attack the biggies — the companies with money. But you only have to look at the mindless antics of the record industry to see some people have no qualms suing individuals who don’t have a room full of lawyers.

The fear, though. That’s the problem.

Pulling your apps is a highly sensible precaution if you think you’re anywhere near infringing on a patent. We only know about these particular problems because of the post from Charles. Chances are, the next app you’re working on could well already have a patent lurking somewhere that you’re infringing.

But if you’re a developer with £500 in the bank, are you going to spend the resource checking this out? No.

The continued threat of a patent problem could have hundreds of thousands of application developers pulling their apps from multiple platforms.

Indeed, if you really, really want to screw up Apple, one would imagine that you should setup a company, invent a lot of useless stupid patents — or buy some existing ones for a lump of dosh — and set-about PR’ing the hell out of your infringement war, scaring all and sundry and demanding millions in compensation from each developer. You obviously wouldn’t need to go through with it to have an effect on Apple. Twitter, Facebook (and now Google+) mean that our world is super-hyper-amazingly connected. Developers even more so. What would happen to Apple’s share price if this practice became widespread?

One solution is to use some of the $70-odd-billion-dollars to buy up the problem companies and shut them down. Job done. Another would be to counter-sue. This would go on for years and put the willies up everyone though. Or Apple could arrange a global license fee that applies to the platform as a whole, so developers aren’t involved. Another possible alternative would be for Apple to indemnify every registered iOS developer with unlimited liability for these kinds of patent claims. That would give a lot of reassurance.

As for the other competing platforms such as Nokia/Windows, WebOS, RIM, Bada and, to a lesser extent, Android, a similar indemnification shield would be useful for attracting and retaining developer attention.

This is one of those issues that’s worth keeping in the back of your mind. It could easily, easily turn into a News of the World style debacle for Apple — I think they’ve got the most to lose from this, given their scale.

Perhaps the issue will simply go away? We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I hope the platforms take note of the plight of some of their developers.

Continuing our BlueVia Introduction series, their top man, Jose Valles, is back — but this time in English! (I hope you enjoyed Jose’s brief Spanish video from Monday).

I asked Jose if he could give me an example of how BlueVia works with developers. He jumped straight into an answer so I’ve edited the video from there — I particularly like his ‘internet speed’ point. It is written in the annals of developer history that thou shalt not expect a mobile operator to move fast. This might well be true, but when it comes to BlueVia, Jose explains that they’re enabling developers to move at internet speed. I can well believe it. Have a watch..

For more information on BlueVia, Telefonica’s developer programme, please visit www.bluevia.com.

Here’s Gideon with an overview of the service:

If you’re proud of what your team has achieved this year, get some recognition with a Meffys Award.

The winners will be announced at a Gala Dinner on the 7th of July 2011 in Covent Garden’s Connaught Rooms. It’s always a fantastic event and the networking is second-to-none. Indeed, it’s worth going along just for that, even if you haven’t submitted an entry.

Here are this year’s categories:

Best Game
Best Music Service
Best TV & Video Service
Best Content
Best Content Discovery & Personalisation Service
Best Social Media Service
Best Ad Campaign
Best Brand on Mobile
Best Mobile Website
Best Blockbuster App
Best Innovative App
Best Technology Innovation
Best Innovative Business Model
Best Innovation in a Mobile First Market
Best M-Commerce Service
Best Business Intelligence
Best Mobile Connected Device
Outstanding Contribution Award

If you’re a small mobile developer, I’d like to draw your attention to this text in the Meffys announcement:

This year, MEF is also offering a special developer rate of £75 per entry.

A very good rate. You can find out more information here.

The deadline for entries is 6pm on Tuesday 26th of April. Every success!

In the fourth episode of our BlueVia Introduction series (kindly supported by BlueVia) we meet Ruben Mellado. Ruben is BlueVia’s Head of Product and Technology and therefore is well placed to give us a bit more of a technical overview of the available APIs. Have a watch!

For more information on BlueVia, Telefonica’s developer programme, please visit www.bluevia.com.

It’s time for the third episode of our BlueVia Introduction series (kindly supported by BlueVia). This time we hear from BlueVia’s top man, José Valles. I was initially planning on doing a 5-6 minute interview with him just to make sure we had his perspective. We spoke together on camera for 20 minutes at Mobile World Congress — and goodness me, it was fascinating. I think perhaps the most exciting element of the interview was the refreshingly direct and hugely enthusiastic manner in which José presented BlueVia.

In this episode, José describes how mobile operators (including Telefonica) have a pretty poor track record when it comes to working with mobile developers. He then sets the scene for BlueVia and describes why Telefonica has introduced the programme.

We’ll have more from José on Monday.

For more information on BlueVia, Telefonica’s developer programme, please visit www.bluevia.com.

I’m not interested in featuring just any developer in the series, though. I’m looking for developers who’ve actually gone beyond the bog-standard iPhone app. I’m looking for developers with demonstrable vision, talent and serious capabilities. Fundamentally, I’m looking to profile developers who understand that whilst today might be all about the App Store, tomorrow is about delivering an interconnected experience, ideally built upon and using the whole power of the network.

For a long time now I’ve been a little frustrated with the current crop of point-and-click application interface layers that we see on today’s mobile phones. As I noted back in May, it’s just not good enough. I need things to be faster, more connected and more reliable. If anything, I need the network to do a lot of the basic thinking for me.

When you talk to developers, the idea of being able to control a mobile network — or at least influence it via a standard Twitter-like API is outrageously cool, but utterly impossible. So much so that most developers don’t actually think about this. They have sensibly stuck to the API documents for the handsets because working with operators is generally impossible. The holy grail with mobile development is the ability to connect your application (or service) to the mobile operator network layer(s) — allowing you to do all kinds of phenomenal things. The sad reality is that this kind of thing has been out of reach for far too long.

It was, therefore, rather exciting to hear what Telefonica is doing with BlueVia. Suffice to say that the mobile operator API I’ve been screaming about for some time has arrived. In the first instance, the BlueVia APIs allow for the ability to originate and receive SMS, include mobile advertising and query user context (e.g. handset, connection speed, parental controls). This is available for 80 million people right now, including the entire o2 UK customer base. Needless so say, given Telefonica’s huge worldwide footprint, there’s a lot more coming both in terms of market access and functionality.

I sat down with James Parton from BlueVia recently to fire a load of questions at him. During that meeting I remarked that I’d like to see how leading mobile developers would use the initial APIs available on BlueVia. I had all sorts of ideas. I am particularly enamoured by the revenue model. I’m going to be investigating this in a lot more depth but let me summarise it thus: You can monetise all the message traffic generated by your app and, at the same time, avoid having to pay an SMS aggregator to send messages! Plus, you can plug straight into the BlueVia mobile advertising system with just a few lines of code. By the end of the meeting we’d worked out a plan whereby BlueVia would sponsor a series of posts here on Mobile Industry Review.

Are you a Mobile Developer Titan?

Therefore I am now on the hunt for mobile developers who’d like to be profiled in this series. To qualify, you need to:

a) Have had at least 2 applications published on one of the mobile application stores (or have developed a rocking mobile web application)

b) Have the capabilities to integrate one of BlueVia’s standard APIs into a demo version of your app so we can see how you’ve interfaced with the network layer. Screenshots or a video is fine. This qualification sets the men from the boys. (Or the women from the girls.) If your programmers can’t handle BlueVia’s industry standard restful interface, you probably shouldn’t be featured as a ‘Titan’ anyway.

c) Demonstrate that you quality for Mobile Titan status. This is defined by you and then agreed with by me. Tell me why you’re good. (Please don’t be British and say you’re ‘ok’. If you’ve created a series of amazing apps and you think you should be profiled, say so.)

The profile piece will include background on your organisation, a focus on your app(s) along with your opinion on the marketplace plus a showcase of your hacking skills featuring some kind of BlueVia API integration. For those developers located in the UK, I’d like to film a video interview with you showing off your work.

To be clear though, the series is open to anyone, anywhere. It’s platform agnostic. Symbian, Samsung Bada, Vodafone 360/JIL, Apple, Android, the whole shebang. Plus mobile web application developers — I’m particularly keen to talk to some of them.

I’ve a few developers in mind already who I’d like to showcase, but I wanted to get this post up first before beginning to decide.

The resulting profile piece will be published on the frontpage of Mobile Industry Review in a dedicated section. The site gets some phenomenally influential readers normally — but I’ve agreed with James that each of the profile pieces from this series will be circulated around Telefonica’s senior management and syndicated on BlueVia’s online properties. So if you’d like to get on Telefonica’s radar with your application or service, this is quite possibly one of the best opportunities ever.

Logistics

- If you’re a public relations professional representing a mobile developer, please do check that your client can manage option ‘b’above before dropping me a note
- I’m aiming to begin publishing within a few weeks
- I’ll aim to showcase the first 10 developers who get in touch — however I reserve the right to say no if I don’t think you meet criteria A and C in the list above

If you’ve any questions, drop me a note. As always I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Telefonica is well known for being serious about working with developers — and I’m pleased to see continual innovations and iterations in their approach as the market evolves.

Here’s the overview from James:

Hi Ewan,

I’m writing to you and the good people at Mobile Industry review as we wanted to be the first to let you know about the launch of Telefonica’s new global developer platform – BlueVia.

We’ve made mistakes when reaching out to developers before (see Simon Maddox’s Mobile Industry Review post from earlier this year about one of the O2 Litmus developer competitions we ran) but we’ve been listening to and working closely with our developer community to learn from those mistakes, improve upon the features our community liked, and evolve the platform to something closely aligned with what developers are really looking for from a telco.

BlueVia is the new global developer programme from Telefonica that helps developers take apps, web services, and ideas to market. The platform lets developers monetise their apps by plugging in powerful, risk free API’s offering revenue share business models. Altogether, BlueVia represents now the possibility to access more than 80 million customers. And it will be more in the near future.

We’re all about more revenues for developers, clear routes to market and an addressable audience – all in a risk free environment.

The platform is currently in closed beta, so you have to register as a developer to receive an invite (or just give me a nudge on Twitter @jamesparton), but most of the site is public for you and all Mobile industry Review readers to take a look around.

Feel free to get in touch with me for more information, but I hope you like what you see with BlueVia and we look forward to sharing more news with you as the platform develops.

Best,

James

Brilliant, thank you very much James. Every success to you and the team.

I’m looking forward to hearing more about how things go.

I’m delighted that he said yes so here we go…

- – - – -

Q: First, could you give us an overview of your role at Nokia? Who are you, what is it that you do?

Marco: I am Vice President of Content and Consumer Engagement at Nokia. My role is to ensure we engage consumers with great content and great experiences through Ovi store, Ovi Maps, Ovi Music and Ovi Messaging. My team and I work with leading content providers to create and provide compelling mobile experiences which seamlessly marry your real world with your virtual mobile world.

Q: You spoke heavily about the importance of ‘context’ in mobile — what do you mean by this?

Marco: Context is most definitely king in the mobile space. In fact, I say that context is the new URL right now. The virtual world doesn’t need a web address. What would have been a URL previously is now replaced with ‘context’; it’s where you are, what you like and what you want to do that determines what’s happening and what’s available around you, what your friends are suggesting, what’s creating buzz and interest. We’re continually working to deliver you the information and experiences you want here and now, via your mobile, to bring together your real world and your virtual world into one seamless, real time experience.

Q: What are you doing to bring more of a contextual experience to your customers? How will that manifest itself for the average person purchasing a Nokia handset in 2011?

Marco: The Gig Finder App is a perfect example of a context-rich, real time experience delivered straight to you via your Nokia device. The App uses Ovi Maps to locate exactly where you are, while a recommendation engine searches your on-device Ovi Music collection to push you real-time information on gigs and music events which are local to you. This virtual experience is then brought straight into your real world with easy on-device ticket purchase, maps to locate the gig, and the ability to check-in and share your experience via social networks while you’re there.

This is just one example of how we’re leveraging context to deliver powerful experiences to our customers. Our new version of Ovi Maps, just being released, takes this concept even further by integrating local events, guides, reviews and reservations from partners such as Lonely Planet, Trip Advisor, Time Out and giving you the ability to select a place, book it, and get direction how to drive/walk or use public transport to get there – all seamlessly integrated into the experience.

Where part does Qt play across Nokia’s device range?

Marco: Our move to a unified Qt / QML developer framework will enable our ecosystem of developers to develop once and distribute to a huge variety of Nokia devices, so Qt is going to play a very important role in driving great experiences for our consumers, while continuing to drive the business opportunities for our partners.

Talking of Qt, How is the Ovi Store performing? Could you give us a run down on some recent highlights?

Marco: We’re coming to the end of a great year for Ovi Store. We’ve seen our daily downloads hit 3.5 million, a million more than in mid-September,  and more than 250,000 new users signing up to Ovi every day. Better still, our ecosystem is getting richer and we’ve seen more than 1.5 million downloads of our Qt SDK this year, and more than 400,000 developers signing to Nokia in the past 12 months or so.

Finally — in a nod to the forthcoming Festive Season — I couldn’t let you go without this question: What gadget(s) will be in your stocking this year?

Marco: I’ll be giving my wife a Nokia N8 (I’m safe saying this here as she works in another industry!) , and I’ll be giving myself a brand new pair of Nokia BH-905 headphones with active noise cancellation – perfect for cranking out the music flying!

And, slightly predictable I know, but what third-party Ovi apps have come to your attention recently?

Marco: I love games, and some of the new titles available for the N8 are quite impressive and a lot of fun to play. Angry Birds Season from Rovio which is now a classic, Galaxy on Fire from Fishlabs and Avatar from Gameloft are at the top of my personal list.  In terms of evergreens, Swype (a gesture based text entry) and Rompl – a music remix application – and Shazam – recognizing which music is playing in the background and allowing you to download it from Ovi – remain some of my all time favorites.
- – - – -

Brilliant — thank you for taking the time Marco!

Standby for Marco’s videos coming shortly…

What’s interesting is that Simon isn’t one of those iFascists, who only have eyes for the traditionally ‘hot’ iOS/Android platforms. No. He’s been looking at the whole range of platforms out there, one of which is Nokia. The company is an obvious choice given the fact they’re seriously turning things round, particularly in the context of Qt (now working across MeeGo/Symbian) and the fact Ovi is witnessing decent, bankable traction.

We hear all the time about developer marketing/outreach programmes from almost every corner of the marketplace — and much of the time I have to hang my head with disappointment at some of the silly strategies I witness. Most of the time it’s good news though, especially in the context of RIM/BlackBerry and Nokia. I’ve seen some excellent results recently.

Alas, Simon’s not had a good experience at all. Have a read:

Hey Ewan

Nokia are doing a lot of “developer outreach” at the moment with Wieden+Kennedy. I’ve been thinking for a few months now that I’d give Ovi a proper try when I had the right app, and now I have it, so I’m particularly interested in what Nokia are doing right now.

So, Nokia held a [Mobile Developer] Freelancers’ Christmas Party a couple of weeks at the Hospital Club in London. I went there armed with a list of high level questions that I’d come up with which would allow me to get started building this app.

The party was very nice, and it was a great afternoon. But nobody from Nokia showed up. The guys at W+K (and the mobile people they’d brought in to help, some of whom I know and respect) had no idea about the answers to my most basic questions, so from a work standpoint it was a wasted afternoon.

So, I got in touch with W+K directly, and asked if they could put me in touch with someone who could answer my questions. I got a very vague response explaining that they’ve got no developer knowledge or developer contacts at Nokia, but if I sent over some more details they could try and put me in touch.

W+K seem to be getting the word out to the right people, but there doesn’t appear to be any support from Nokia at all. What use is developer outreach if developers can’t ask any questions?

I’m here actively trying to get my questions answered – and they wonder why developers aren’t flocking to them…

Cheers,

Simon

Well this is not good at all.

I do hear about these kind of things all the time. Really good marketing, but rubbish actual ‘connectivity’ — so it’s great if you’d like a free drink, but rather frustrating if, like Simon, you actually want to get things done.

Just to be clear, this was a Freelance Mobile Developer Christmas party, held (ostensibly) by Nokia (check this site for the details about the event). You could only go along if you were a mobile developer.

And nobody from Nokia bothered to go along?

Nobody from W+K could be bothered to give anything but a muted, mumbled ‘er, dunno’ to real questions from a real developer seriously evaluating their platforms? Dear me.

As Thayer (who works with W+K on Nokia’s developer outreach) writes in her invitation:

Nokia are keen to extend their corporate cuddle to their Ovi devs – past, present and future! No carol singing required

At some point you actually need ‘Nokia’ to manifest itself as real, helpful humans.

I post Simon’s letter a) to chronicle the issue — Nokia are most certainly not the only company experiencing this kind of disconnect and b) to highlight specifically that Wieden+Kennedy and Nokia UK need to get their act together. They need to… communicate.

If I was blowing millions with W+K, I’d be seriously annoyed to learn of Simon’s experience.

Knowing how much Nokia value developer attention, one would expect W+K to have dropped everything until they managed to connect Simon to the right guy at Nokia HQ.

Really bad news.

Meanwhile Simon, I’ll connect you straight into the right people at Nokia. If you also went along to the funky Hospital Club hoping to meet someone, drop me a note and I’ll plug you in too.

[Update: Thanks to James Whatley on behalf of Nokia for getting in touch and connecting Simon]

Now then, do you have some programming experience, including a bit of C and C++? And maybe a bit of Objective-C?

And have you been looking for an opportunity to get stuck into properly developing applications for iPhone and iPad?

And do you like proper Cajun food?

Well then, perhaps the 5-day Tee-Boy Developer Camp is for you. It’s happening in late October and from the descriptions and menu, it looks like it might be rather useful for anyone wanting to swiftly assimilate the platform basics.

I had a look at the menu and apart from the seafood, it’s looking good.

I’m not familiar with the camp or the instructor but the write-up on their site, the menus and the syllabus looks pretty unique. Everything’s included for $2,995 — you just need to get yourself to Lafayette Regional Airport.

Imagine being immersed in highly technical topics in a relaxing and culturally rich setting. With your mind at ease, we believe you can learn better and absorb more, and that’s exactly why we’ve put together an unforgettable training package in the heart of Southwest Louisiana. It is here, in the peaceful quiet of the Cajun Prairie, that you’ll focus on learning, while we take care of everything else!

More information over at the Tee-Boy Developer Camp website.

I am sat amongst the creme of the UK’s mobile developer talent. There is a significant amount of beards in evidence so I know I’m amongst the developer elite.

Right now, there’s a chap up on stage walking through the CustomListItem(); procedure and how that corresponds to a UI list item. This isn’t for the faint hearted but I am witnessing lots of people with their heads down furiously taking notes. I’m also seeing lots of pens hovering over lips, folk staring intently and hands supporting heads whilst developers stare intently. I would thus surmise that the presentations are being well received by the audience.

It’s a little bit lost on me, though. I can more or less understand what they’re discussing (being a bit of a PHP developer myself). But I’m not the target audience. As the questions at the end of the last section demonstrated, the developers here are seriously evaluating Samsung’s Bada and very much appreciating the in-depth technical briefings being delivered.

That’s not to say today is all geekery. No, we’ve had presentations outlining the substantial possibilities with Samsung Bada. We were, for example, reminded that Samsung sent 40 million touchscreen phones into the market last year.

Interestingly, Samsung aren’t aiming to compete directly with the existing smartphone platforms. Instead, they’re aiming to enlarge the existing market, moving feature phone users to smartphone users. I like the strategy, given that Samsung are one of the biggest manufacturers of phones we’d normally refer to as ‘feature’ class. One slide — which I’ll see if I can pick up — showed a pie chart with the 15-20% chunk assigned to Smartphones, the rest feature phones. The Samsung chap then modified the pie chart to show the smartphone segment enlarging to perhaps 40% — indicating where Samsung intends attracting its customer base from.

I found the image:

We were also reminded to consider Samsung at the macro level as one of the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturers.

Will we, then, be seeing Bada on tablets, netbooks and televisions? A question from the audience had the panel of Samsung executives in a mild panic. Could they confirm that Bada will appear on other platforms? One of the executives — after some considered whispering — made it clear that ‘today, we’re just talking about Bada Mobile’.

Interesting. So we’ll be seeing Bada elsewhere.

It’s very easy to forget Samsung’s market size, might and capabilities. Sitting in front of their evangelists and executives talking through the Bada OS in detail, and answering challenging questions from the audience confidently and swiftly, I am very much left with the viewpoint that Samsung is very, very serious about Bada and the platform is going to be very, very successful.

Now, there’s a lot that has to happen for that to happen — but if the audience here are a reliable barometer, there isn’t going to be any shortage of attention for the Bada platform from UK developers. We shall see.

It’s getting a little bit silly now, dear reader.

Ridiculously silly. We’ve had a good year now of mobile applications taking off, going ballistic. Now, though, it’s time for the industry to get real about the iPhone: It isn’t the only handset on the marketplace.

The World Is Not Flat

I understand that the iPhone is gorgeous, glorious, elegant, beautiful. Indeed, I have been first in the line to pan the painfully obvious failures of other manufacturers who had the temerity to vomit out handsets that couldn’t hope to match the ‘elegance’ of the jPhone (“Jesus Phone”).

I won’t go into specifics, suffice to say that for the last 3 years, any manufacturer stupid enough to show off their ‘iPhone killer’ looked, well, stupid. Very stupid.

And now that the plebians have got hold of them — i.e. you can get the jPhone free on contract in the United Kingdom — it seems there’s no stopping the iPhone juggernaut.

i-Limitations

As I discussed in my DevNest presentation last Wednesday, the iPhone has limitations. Here’s a good example: Anyone calling themselves a geek and actually using an iPhone as their primary handset is universally acknowledged to be wet. Highly wet. Aged-45-and-still-lives-with-his-parents wet. That’s because the iPhone is a glorified Fisher Price toy phone. It doesn’t do background applications. Like the proverbial thick-kid at the back of the class, the iPhone can only do one thing at a time. iPhone users are reduced to thinking and working in monotone.

[Sidenote: I do feel for the people showing off magnificently crafted applications that turn your iPhone into something awesome. I'm thinking of super-cool mobile messaging aggregators, VOIP clients or remote access clients, anything that's particularly nifty. How galling is it to know that when your users get a phone call, the whole sodding house of cards -- the simply fantastic system you've built -- falls to pieces because the device only does one thing at a time? And then the user has to fire up the application again... Simply rubbish, isn't it?]

Anyway, for the rest of the planet, the iPhone is a pretty nice experience. My mother loves hers. My wife — having dumped her Android G1 for the latest iPhone 3GS — is delighted. She is particularly enamoured with the nifty applications.

iPhone: 14% — still in the teens!

Gartner reckons that in terms of 2009 sales, worldwide, 14% of them were iPhones. 20% were BlackBerries and a whopping 47% were Symbian devices. 4% were Android (which, in case you were wondering, is why nobody is downloading your Android app). Just so we’ve got numbers in perspective, there were roughly 80 million smartphones sold in 2009. Looking at total handset sales — including rubbish devices — Nokia shipped 440 million phones last year. Samsung shipped 235 million, LG knocked back 122 million and both Sony and Motorola did about 50 million each.

Today, Nokia will ship about a million phones. Just to be clear: Over a million phones will leave their factories today.

And you’re busy developing on… iPhone.

Yes.

Great.

iPhone has served its purpose. It has demonstrated that mobile applications have relevance, that the market is worthy of attention. We have got past the stage of experimentation though. We know it works.

It is no longer good enough to only release an iPhone application. It’s fine to experiment with it. But if you’re a big brand and you only release on the iPhone, you’re stupid. Stupid, stupid and thrice stupid.

That’s because there’s a massive market sitting staring in the window wondering why they can’t do business with you.

The other platforms out there have been working really hard to make sure that the app experience on their handsets is beginning to resemble the elegance of iPhone. BlackBerry’s AppWorld is working nicely. Nokia’s Ovi Store is chugging back 1.5m downloads a day now. Samsung are working hard on their offerings, likewise Sony. Even the Android Marketplace is becoming useful.

Time To Think About Other Platforms

For a long time I’ve been complaining to Nokia. I’ve been going nuts over the fact that, a few months ago, I went out and bought a Nokia N86 on contract from UK operator, 3. The N86 is a piece of engineering genius and the camera is simply fantastic. I really do like it.

Here’s the example I’ve used — that really winds me up. A little while ago, Ocado (the grocery delivery service allied to the Waitrose chain of shops) launched an iPhone application. The app enables you to literally order your toilet rooms whilst you’re sat on the train. Genius. It’s basically an app interface to their existing online ordering portal.

My problem is this: How come the chump sitting opposite me on the train with his iPhone can order his toilet rolls with a few taps — and, with my Nokia N86, I can’t?

It’s because the people at Ocado decided not to create a Nokia/Symbian app. Instead, they decided just to focus on iPhone.

Initially I railed at Nokia for allowing this situation. And whilst the manufacturer did carry a substantial amount of responsibility for not creating the conditions to easily allow application creation and dissemination, the key issues are more or less fixed.

I don’t believe it’s Nokia’s problem any more. It’s companies like Ocado that are holding the marketplace back.

I’ll be more specific: It’s the digital agencies that are propping up the iFascist viewpoint.

I should point out that I haven’t phoned Ocado to find out if they did their development in-house or via an agency. I don’t want to because the Waitrose brand is held particularly high in my mind. I don’t want to destroy that by phoning them and finding out that they’re a bunch of numbskulls who haven’t even considered developing on other platforms. I actually did phone and got through to the voicemail of a chap called Ben.

But it doesn’t look good for Ocado. Oh no.

Silicon carries an fantastically illuminating interview with Jon Rudoe, head of retail at Ocado. Here is Jon discussing why they launched their iPhone app:

Silicon: What was your business case for launching an app?
Ocado: “The [problem] that people are trying to solve is: ‘How do I get my cupboard stocked and my fridge full with the products I want? How do I find, select and retrieve my weekly grocery needs?’ When you look at the world like that then you almost become platform agnostic. So, rather than sitting there thinking ‘well, I must have a website’, or ‘I must have a supermarket’, or ‘I must have whatever’, you actually find yourself thinking ‘I must have a mechanism for people to fulfil that want/need/job’… And then all you have to ask yourself is: ‘Do people want to do that on this platform?’.”

So we must assume that the Ocado chaps sat around the conference table and decided that anyone using a Nokia, a Samsung or a BlackBerry was unclean. Dirty. And of course, dirty people wouldn’t want to use Ocado on their device, right?

Here’s one more quote from the Silicon piece:

Silicon: How much research did you do before you launched the app?
John: “It was quite easy, at the stage we started developing, to look at the market and to look at where most of the phone usage was. We did some research and we can obviously spot which customers were visiting our regular website from which mobile devices and obviously we could understand general statistics about iPhones and other smartphone penetration. [An iPhone app was] a pretty obvious first place to start, basically.”

Goodness me.  This is why the mobile industry is screwed at the moment.

Numbskulls.

Ocado selected iPhone and for everybody else using a Nokia, a Samsung or a Sony Ericsson — or anything else — their message is (by default): If you want to order your toilet rolls on the train, sod off and buy an iPhone.

Unfortunately that isn’t a sustainable or sensible suggestion. It’s like suggesting customers trying to use Ocado Online from their Mac laptop should go and buy a PC first. Or vice versa.

Jon-from-Ocado goes on to point out that the iPhone now accounts for 2% of their online sales.

Let’s just stop there for a moment.

TWO PERCENT?

Their heads must button up the back.

TWO PERCENT of your sales go via mobile and you’ve limited that to ONLY iPhones?

What about Nokia?

What about Samsung?

What about BlackBerry?

It beggars belief, it really does.

The Cost Issue

Of course it’s expensive to develop on multiple platforms. Yes indeed. The kind of expense that small developers simply can’t cope with. And that’s entirely understandable. But if you’re an online retail giant — and TWO PERCENT of your sales are coming from iPhone already — what’s stopping you reaching out to other platforms?

Well it’s probably because it’s difficult.

That’s right. The one thing most digital agencies don’t tell their clients is that they don’t have a flucking clue how to develop for the other platforms.

Do ask your mobile agency about developing on Nokia. Or BlackBerry. Or Vodafone 360.  Watch their horrified look. Watch their faces screw up with mock disdain. It’s no longer possible to dismiss anything other than iPhone as ‘irrelevant’ or ‘not ready for prime time’.

This poses a real challenge for the Nike-wearing digital agency fraternity, who’ve had a really nice time knocking back the iPhone apps at pretty good rates.  Most of them have no experience with any other platforms. Most of them will — when your call comes in — be reaching for the phone number of that Eastern European mobile developer company, because the agency themselves — seriously — can’t tell a BlackBerry from a Samsung.

That’s going to become quite a business challenge for a lot of companies, soon.

It’s Not Just Ocado

Of course it’s not just Ocado guilty of this iFascism (“only focusing on the iPhone”) — the industry is rife with it. While everyone is busy competing with each other on the iPhone, there’s a land-grab beginning on the other platforms. It’s been ok to ignore these platforms whilst they’ve been busy struggling to establish themselves.

They’re established now.

And if you’re not developing for these other platforms, if you think they’re irrelevant — be very careful. They’re now coming of age and looking for their own superstars to rise up and dominate their charts. Heroes are being made on a daily basis across the other platforms. Even BlackBerry’s AppWorld has now started creating millionaires out of developers who were smart enough to get stuck in way before the hordes descend.

It’s time for me to calm down now.

Update: For the Americans, here’s the definition of ‘wet‘.

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

In the second part of our interview with Ben Keighran of Chomp, we learn more about the company and in particular, their developer services (“Chomp Connect“). If you’re an iPhone app developer, I very much recommend having a look at their offering.

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

In the third part of our interview I asked Ben about his background in mobile and was surprised to discover that, amongst other things, he’s a dab hand at writing Bluetooth Apps… AT bluetooth commands via a Sony Ericsson, anybody?

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

And finally, who better to take us through a demo of the service, than the co-founder himself?

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

FreeAppAlert is a service that tells you when the app you’ve been wanting to buy — but weren’t prepared to pay for, becomes free.

Across the evolution of an application, you’ll often see an app released for $$$ before the price is lowered, and sometimes, it’s made free — especially if the developer’s after your eyeballs in return for ad revenue or another related metric.

Me? I’ll just keep on buying.

You can set up FreeAppAlert’s site to notify you via email, twitter, or RSS about the newest free iPhone apps, including those making the jump from behind a pay wall. If you don’t want to be bothered with notifications, you can browse the site by date when you’re in the mood to stock up on new apps.

via FreeAppAlert Notifies You When For-Pay iPhone Apps Become Free – Free – Lifehacker.

It’s one for the ‘why does Twitter *actually* rock’ pile…

- – - – -

Hey Ewan,

Think I’ve found one of the best reasons why Twitter rocks. I tweeted this earlier:

Dear GitX: if I click “delete branch”, I’d like to confirm that before it actually happens.

Oh no! I just deleted a whole load of code!!

*GitX is a frontend to the version control system, Git, by the way.)

A couple of hours later, I received this tweet from the creator of GitX:

@simonmaddox sorry about the GitX branch deletion. You can try git-resurrect (http://tinyurl.com/d33ufk) to resurrect the old branch

While I’d already realised that Time Machine is awesome, it’s great to see that you can have direct access to the developers of whatever software you use, without looking like a tool on a random forum or IRC channel..

Cheers,
Simon

- – - – -

Couldn’t agree more Simon. What a brilliant example of the power and usefulness of Twitter. Thanks for sending this!

If you’ve got examples similar to Simon’s experience, send them in to me.

Today, companies like Apple are making mammoth profits through their application store for their phones and Google too has joined the race. It only makes sense for RIM to give the best to the developer community.

We’ve already talked about DeviceAnywhere in the past and even spoke to them at CTIA.

The Net60 framework, along with Microsoft’s Visual Studio provide you with a powerful platform to develop apps for the S60 platform very easily. The app will be demonstrated at the Show today.

Dusan Babich, CEO of Red Five Labs, said:

We have been building the .NET compact framework for Symbian devices for many years. Symbian developers have never before had such an easy to use, easy to deploy, development experience.

The version 2.0 of Net60  brings:

• .NET Compact Framework 2.0 compatibility (including generics)
• Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 support
• SQLite support with an ADO.NET provider
• A managed namespace providing access to native Symbian APIs (telephony, camera, OpenGL, GPS etc.)

With Net60, developers can run managed WinMo apps on S60 without any changes. The same code and programming environment can be made use of to develop apps for the S60 platform.