Do you need an international business development director? I asked him to write a brief overview without going into too much detail. If you like the sound of him, drop me a note, I’ll get him to contact you.

UK based international business developer with extensive experience in mobile operator, device and 2.0 applications ecosystems.

Self confessed gadget nerd, app addict and lover of all things mobile. Product evangelist, International speaker and panelist at key mobile industry events.

Led global business development for current assignment since 2008 launch, managing strategic partnerships with leading mobile operators, device vendors and distribution partners.

Created innovative acquisition/retention/monetization programmes rolled out to over 200 million subscribers worldwide. Company now on course to exceed 100* million registered users by end of 2011.

Seeking to connect with ambitious established mobile developers within the disruptive mobile social ecosystem who wish to break into new territories, broaden distribution channels and monetise services using either direct or partner generated models.

*I changed this figure from it’s precise nature to something more rounded.

Thanks to this chap’s work with his existing firm, the chances are he’d probably be able to leverage existing contacts for some very quick wins.

Anyway, as always, I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.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.

I saw this note from Ray at mobile payments provider, Bango on the MoMoLondon list. It may well be of interest to any application developers reading.

Bango is adding new capabilities to its “In Application” analytics service. Info is sent from the App to Bango using an “open” protocol that any developer can implement with ther own code, but we also want to provide “reference” implementations for the API/SDK to support the vast majority of developers who want to plug-and-play.

We have Android and Blackberry SDK’s that we will be publishing, but we want to speed up the availability of the iPhone version, and thought we would see if anybody externally would be interested in building it.

The Android and Blackberry code and documentation are available to “copy”. The work would be for Bango, but we intend to “open source” the resulting code to ensure transparency and allow innovation.

Based on the previous projects we expect this to be a 3-5day project.

Bango would pay for the work, and you will also have the pleasure of knowing that your code will be performing an important role on millions of iPhones by reporting app usage to their developers.

We need to do this in the next couple of weeks.

Please email james at bango.com with some evidence you can do this and indicative costs and availability if you are interested in doing this work.

We can acknowledge you as the author of this sample code ….

Our first featured developer is Mark Tynan of mobile travel experts, ShopQwik. The application is nothing short of a piece of genius and allows you to book a flight and/or hotel, anywhere on the planet, within about 60-90 seconds, direct from your mobile. What’s more, if you’re American (true paperless ticketing at just about every US airport), then the service really comes into it’s own. You don’t need to bother printing out nonsense. Just click, click and you’re done. You can get all your details at the touch of a button via the ShopQwik application.

In the video below, Mark talks about evolving ShopQwik along with the challenges they face developing for hundreds of handsets — and gives a perspective on how useful DeviceAnywhere would be in that process.

DeviceAnywhere Developer Roadshow: ShopQwik from Ewan MacLeod on Vimeo.

If you’d like to feature in the DeviceAnywhere Developer Roadshow, drop me a note. Provided you’re in the UK, we’ll do our best to try and feature you. That means a visit from me, bearing gifts in the form of an extended DeviceAnywhere trial. We’ll aim to profile your company and get your viewpoints on the DeviceAnywhere service.

The roadshow is kindly supported by DeviceAnywhere.

I was interviewing Mark for the DeviceAnywhere Developer Roadshow we’re doing here at SMS Text News. I tell you, it’s just brilliant. Brilliant. I’m thoroughly enjoying being able to show DeviceAnywhere to top quality developer/entrepreneurs like Mark.

I sat him down and flipped open the DeviceAnywhere Studio (check out the walk-through) and brought up a few devices.

“Awww, look at that!” he said, as I opened up a few handsets, “It’s like having the handset there in your hand!”

Mark went on to explain that he’s spent about 20,000 pounds or more on handsets over the last three years (including contracts). With burgeoning demand for ShopQwik on a whole load of different platforms, testing is a key issue for him — he reckons he’ll be able to get some excellent benefits from using DeviceAnywhere, although I’ll leave the specifics ’til the video.

We’ll have it cut and online next week.

Meantime I’m off now to catch my flight to Dublin for Unlimited Drinks tonight!

The bridging technology will come in the form of an intuitive tool to create applications and allow “Flash Lite content to be encapsulated in Java ME applications”. Sony Ericsson has promised developers should be able to get their hands on the goodies in the second half of this year.

Microsoft’s Flash rival Silverlight came a bit late to this party and technology like this, which strengthens both the incumbent mobile platforms, won’t make it any easier for Silverlight to make its mark in the mobile world.

Earlier reports had suggested that Sony Ericsson would stop supplying devices to DoCoMo altogether, but Sony Ericsson has been denying this and the AFP quotes a spokesman as saying the company has no plans to ditch the Japanese market.

I’ll be interested to find out how NTT DoCoMo and Sony Ericsson will change their plans, but I can’t see the attraction in cutting ties completely – Japan might be a tough market right now, but it’s still practically the centre of the universe for mobile developments.