I had a note in from the DeviceAnywhere team today to let me know that they’ve now added the iPad into their handset line-up so you can now remotely use and control an iPad with their service. So if you’d like to see if your app *actually* works on a real live iPad (as apposed to the emulator) and you haven’t yet managed to get hold of a device, definitely check out the DeviceAnywhere offering. Especially since they’ve got a special offer running at the moment.

Of course, it’s not just iPads… you can test your (web) apps on hundreds of different devices on tons of different carrier networks using the DeviceAnywhere Virtual Developer Lab service. Get stuck in!

It always gets exciting when The Blandford gets involved (that is, Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian). Responding to a query about successful Symbian downloads, Rafe pointed out that Quickoffice is on over 100 million Symbian phones. Including the 3 Symbian devices on my desk, here.

Rafe makes an interesting point for developers: Don’t forget the embed option.

There are a few developers I know right now who are currently doing embed deals with handset manufacturers (that is, getting their application pre-installed on the handsets). It’s not an easy process, but it can make you wildly, wildly successful.

For instance, one developer I know is going to go from maybe a few thousand downloads to 15 million installs, guaranteed, by this time next year. They’re integrating directly into the menu structure.

It’s not as simple as signing up to the iPhone dev programme and paying the $100 fee, but if you’ve got a particularly interesting, unique and relevant app, it’s definitely worth a chat with the manufacturers. You’ll also want some kind of revenue stream attached to it as you typically won’t have manufacturers paying you a lot (or indeed, any) money for an embed deal.

This said, don’t forget the embed option… !

Ty McMahan of the WSJ quotes Jeff Smith, CEO of SonicMule (the people who make the phenomenal music app, Smule) thus:

“Nokia isn’t on the shortlist of anything we do at Smule because we don’t think we can make any money.”

Unfortunately this is the view shared by absolutely everybody in Silicon Valley. There are about 8 exceptions that I’m aware of, perhaps a little more. I could name them right here, but doing so could risk iFascists with pitchforks turning up on their doors.

[iFascist definition: Someone who can only tolerate the iPhone, possibly Android and -- at a push, Palm's webOS. Anything other platform is deemed by an iFascist as irrelevant]

For a long time Nokia appeared confused at the growing iPhone and application furore. They’ve had applications for years — I’ve been using them for a long time. Indeed, striking the jackpot as a mobile developer before iPhone was really simple: Get Nokia to include your app on their millions of devices.

And for a long time, I have levelled a significant amount of criticism at the company. And I do mean significant. Just do a search for ‘Nokia’ and ‘Ovi Store’ here on Mobile Industry Review. Or, actually, just search Nokia. I’ve written some pretty biting things. It was a) how I felt and b) a reasonable reflection on reality. Rafe Blandford from All About Symbian (amongst others) would pull me down from the wall with good, smart ripostes. But fundamentally, I was right. Nokia hadn’t done X or Y. They hadn’t got this or that working. They’d released products or services into the marketplace that had silly bugs — with no easy way to remotely fix. Goodness me the list was as long as my arm.

Slowly, the company got round to it. The amount of times I internally rolled my eyes whilst I filmed Nik Savander explaining that the Ovi Store launch parameters had been missed and the company had entirely underestimated demand… I had to stifle a scream of angst when Savander then explained it would ‘take some time’ (words to that effect) to put the right. That stifled scream turned to a stifled wail when he clarified he was talking in quarters, not weeks or months.

I remember Rafe asking a question about Single Sign-On — a much discussed issue in NokiaWatcher circles — Nokia had bought all these companies, created all these services, and yet you had to have a different username for almost every single one. Silly things like that made the company look inept and positively last-century compared to the simple ease of the iPhone platform.

Installing an application was a sodding rigmarole. Ovi Maps was ridiculous (It couldn’t find the Colosseum in Rome, I kid ye not — I did that experiment).

But this is in the past. This is the problem with the kind of comments some of Silicon Valley’s finest are coming out with about Nokia.

Right now — *right now* — if you go and buy a Nokia N86, yes, you’ll typically have to keep on pressing ‘yes, yes, confirm, yes, use the 3G internet to connect, yes’ and so on. But the next generation… this is something to watch.

There are legions of consumers buying X6 and other such Nokia devices that are free from much of the friction of the previous era. It’s only going to get better.

Single Sign-On is fixed. The next stage will see Android-like unified login introduced to the startup procedure, automatically configuring everything from music, store, messaging, maps and so on. Try downloading an application from the Ovi Store on your bog standard N86 and, shock horror, it’ll simply install and run. No constant confirmations.

The next generation of Nokia devices — that is, the ones that hit the market in 6-8 months are going to be seriously relevant for developers, especially given the abject joy that the Qt development framework is bringing to many already.

Nokia has got the message, they’ve implemented the right changes and the next generation — well, it’s going to be really, really exciting.

The platform should be on every developer’s radar. But it should also be on ‘the shortlist’ as Jeff called it. Whilst developers are arsing around with Android, they should be evaluating and playing with Nokia’s Qt — their next generation development language. They should be taking baby steps right now by launching experimental toe-in-water apps.

There are over 130 million Symbian powered Qt devices in the market right now. Right now.

The latest version of Skype for Symbian just launched? Written in Qt.

Now, I understand that 130 million Symbian users cannot immediately search the Ovi Store for Skype and download it, because not all of them have the Ovi Store installed yet. But a lot of them do. And if you have Ovi Store installed (or pre-installed by default on all new Nokias), Skype — and any other app you’d care to develop — is a keyword search and a click or two away, just like it is on the iPhone.

Nokia is all about volume. 40 million iPhones/iPod Touches — that’s lovely and it’s delivering a lot of success for people.

Fast forward say 18 months… and let’s be a bit ballsy with some predictions… 500 million addressable Symbian devices in market? (Remember Nokia ships a million handsets before it gets out of bed every morning, ever day of the week) Hundreds of millions of users are all going to be looking for your app.

Get started now and avoid the rush.

And if you’re serious and you’d really like to be pointed in the right direction to get started developing with Nokia, I’ll help out. Drop me an email, ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

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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.

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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?

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

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On Wednesday evening, you pressed pause.

Yeah. It’s back on.

Maybe.

Eric Slivka over at MacRumours is reporting that — no, it was all a big misunderstanding! Apple didn’t mean it. When they said they’d pulled 5,000 apps, they… well, you should have known! They didn’t actually mean that.

Have they reconsidered their decision to remove all explicit apps? No. They have redefined the market.

Eric has confirmed that Apple has:

… now added a new “Explicit” category in the iTunes Connect system for App Store submissions. The category is included in drop-down menus that allow developers to select categories for their applications to be placed in, and appears alongside the traditional App Store categories such as “Books”, “Entertainment”, and “Games”.

Who knows?

You have to wonder why Apple didn’t simply introduce the new category on Monday. No one would have complained. No one would have challenged it. Indeed, I’m sure a lot of developers would have welcomed the clarifying move.

But now that Apple has taken the temperature of the market and found it raaaather hot, it appears that they’ve done a u-turn. This is good news for developers. But a total waste of time and resources for them too.

Will there be a new explicit category? Well, there appears to be one already. But what does it mean? Does that mean that all 5,000 must be re-submitted there?

Could we have some clarity please, Apple?

And, have you got any more hairbrained schemes that developers should know about? Any plans to remove all the sports applications (apart from ESPN, MLB, NFL, etc.,) for some arbitrary reason? Just … do let us know.

Update: Ok, they are dicking about some more. MobileCrunch reports that the ‘Explicit’ category has now been wiped from the Apple memory.

I can well understand this — especially if you’ve got a good revenue stream coming from the App Store. But it does seem a little unhealthy that developers are unwilling to discuss the issue publicly.

“Can I cut and paste anonymously?” I’ve asked quite a few times in response to emails I’ve received.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” comes the frequent reply, “I just wanted to email to let you know my feelings.”

TechFlash from Seattle had a chat with Phil Yerkes, developer of the Hooters Calendar app. Hooters, being a ‘trusted’ brand is ok — and of course, Hooters is all about the concept of good looking all-American girls, rather than nude and naked imagery. So Hooters are fine and Phil is working on the, “no news is good news” policy.

Here’s one email that’s came in — I won’t identity the developer. This isn’t necessarily a view that’s shared by all the developers I’ve talked to — who seem to be working on the wait-and-see hope-it’ll-blow-over approach. It makes for interesting reading.

I’m not usually to swayed by what companies do, but Apple’s censorship has really ticked me off. OK the apps they binned were probably crap (on that basis alone, they should kill another 100,000 or so), but Apple has no right to tell me what I might be offended by.

I dumped my iPhone and picked up a Nokia N97 a couple of weeks ago, and love it. It’s not perfect, but there’s no shortage of apps, and the camera and keyboard alone blow the iPhone away in terms of daily use. If I can’t find an app I want, I’ll just make it (when I have time) with no effing about with fancy developer licenses, no need for special permission from Apple to install WHAT I WANT ONTO MY OWN DEVICE.

Plus N97 has decent (not perfect) Flash support right out of the box. I’m kind of hoping it will gain from the Flash Player 10.1 release, but maybe I’m just dreaming…

No one owns an iPhone – they are just rented. They have to be. No one would permit Apple or any other company such control over something they had actually *bought*.

It’s the devil you know.

The fact is it’s pretty easy to develop on the Apple platform. Further more the distribution mechanism is stupidly simple. I just need to tell you the name of the app and you know how to locate and install it. Purchase, installation, the whole process is magnificently suited to normal mobile users. And we all know it’s possible to make a million-a-month from an iPhone app. Even though precious few are actually (at least, publicly) achieving this.

As I said in my earlier post, this is a tremendous opportunity for BlackBerry, Nokia/Symbian, Microsoft, Palm and Android to stand-up and make it clear that they won’t be behaving like Apple.

One of the exciting points about the mobile industry is that it moves so fast. One announcement can literally change the market — so that everyone needs to turn on a sixpence. For example, the announcement of the iPhone back in Jan 2007 caused business plans and product roadmaps to be re-written. Nokia announcing that navigation is now free with all their new handsets — that’s another example of the industry having to chop and change swiftly reacting to new dynamics, new economics, new platforms. What is extremely unhelpful is when the innovation goes the other way, when all of a sudden what you thought was solid earth is now a swamp. It’s uncalled for, it’s unprofessional and it’s symptomatic of an organisation that doesn’t give a toss about it’s developer community.

This will, as usual, roll on for a little while. Michael Arrington and his team of smarts at TechCrunch will continue to exert pressure. At some point, Apple will feel it needs to wheel out Mr Schiller to placate the developer masses. Temporarily. It’s Apple’s platform. Their choice, their game. But there’s a heck of a lot of developers (and, more importantly, their financial backers — small and large) taking a second glance at the hallowed App Store and wondering… is the grass greener, yet?

Right now I’d say no. Right now if you have $50,000 to spend, developing on the Apple platform is a good bet — because you can guarantee that *getting* the application is useful. It’s your problem to get the word out, though. But if you can get the word out, if you’ve got a partner or a good way of talking to your target audience, you can be successful.

However… RIM’s BlackBerry App World is making a lot of millionaires. Nokia’s platform is hitting the million-a-day download mark consistently. There’s substantial value to being first on those platforms rather than one-of-a-thousand on the iPhone App Store. Both companies have had about a year or so to get their houses in order.

If you’re a developer and you’re reading this, take a closer look at BlackBerry and Nokia. Chances are you’re probably already looking at Android — remember that there were 6m Android units sold last year (stats) versus 34m BlackBerries and 80m Nokia Smartphones — but take a look at those two platforms. If you need any help, I can plug you straight into the right people at either company, just drop me an email (ewan@mobileindustryreview.com).

Leaving aside the hypocrisy (again, TechCrunch is on the money), this is a serious, serious problem for mobile developers.

It’s all very well having to jump around the ridiculous and occasionally bizarre acceptance rulings that we’ve all heard about — but very quickly, those became standard. Sort of standard. Developers did the British thing: Grin and bear it. At least you knew where you were. Sort of. As long as you followed the semi-mythical ‘my-friend-said’ approach and submitted your app, all things being equal, you’d get approved and bish-bash-bosh, you were live in the app store.

Indeed I know of many developers who are very careful not to count their chickens — that is, they warn their investors (or their partners) that their app might not get accepted. They take every possible action to avoid any hold-ups at the acceptance stage, then, once they get the confirmation from Apple, they can dance the night away. Millions of dollars will arrive forthwith.

At least, that’s what most developers are hoping for. Developing for the iPhone is more or less a lottery. A real lottery. Some people make it big, most don’t — but, like buying a lottery ticket, at least you were in with a chance.

Now, however, the game has changed slightly.

The risk factor is significantly higher.

We’d all hoped that this was behind us, that — after the last debacle, when Phil Shiller was wheeled out — Apple had got the message: Stop arsing around.

There’s an issue now. A massive problem. How sure can you be that your application won’t be removed for some weird and wonderful reason? What happens if Apple decides to move into the baby market by creating a series of products and services for mothers-with-babies? Does that mean that Apple would switch off the thousands of baby applications currently in the store?

Potentially.

Or maybe not.

The problem is, we don’t know.

So now your investment profile is going to have to change. Because the platform is so easy to develop for, I think the short term impact of this increased uncertainty will be low. Very low. But it means when the rest of the marketplace catches up — when the likes of Nokia’s Qt running on Symbian and MeeGo begins to arrive in terms of an addressable population of hundreds of millions, there’s going to be an opportunity to win over a lot of developers by offering certain and predictable terms.

Likewise, Android and BlackBerry should be stepping up to the plate to make it clear that — in the light of this news from Apple — they won’t change the game overnight on their developers, that they’re committed to protecting their developer interests.

If you were sitting pretty earning a recurring $10k a month each from your 5 ‘babe’ apps on the App Store, you’re hardly likely to be that well disposed to Apple this week.

RIM? Nokia? Symbian? Android? Let’s be hearing from you please!

Have you come across Ideaworks?

No?

Definitely take a look. Last October they launched a PC version of their cross-platform mobile application software development kit. Essentially this enabled developers to use the Ideaworks SDK to build an application that, with just a single click, will work on:

- iPhone
- Android
- Symbian
- Windows Mobile
- Brew
- Maemo
- iPad (coming soon)

And whilst the Airplay SDK has been met with joy from many developers, there’s been an issue. It’s the ‘Apple’ issue — a lot of developers like to use Apple as their primary development platform. This is especially true if you’re an iPhone developer (which, of course, so many people are, nowadays).

Well, Ideaworks listened and Ideaworks delivered. They’ve just launched Airplay SDK for Mac.

The next issue… how much does it cost? Well, it’s actually good news. Have a read of this:

Mac/iPhone developers with annual revenues of less than $100,000 can use Airplay SDK 4.1 for iPhone development absolutely free, or deploy across all supported platforms at a cost of $99 per seat per year. Those with revenues between $100,000 and $2m pay $999 per seat per year, and receive an increased level of support. For organizations earning over $2m annually, details are available on request.

That sounds fair enough to me. $1k to port to design and port to every major platform? Nice. For the majority of developers, that will work very nicely. And for the biggies, they can afford to fork out a bit more.

Interested? Developers can register and download a full free evaluation of Airplay SDK 4.1 on Mac (Beta) by visiting www.airplaysdk.com. Get stuck in!

I’m hopefully going to try and get Ideaworks on camera at Mobile World Congress with more information shortly.

The Parrot AR.Drone, the darling of this year’s CES, is a super, super example of a device that will have millions of people thinking, ‘shit, I really need to get an iPhone‘.

Got an iPhone? (Or an iPod Touch?)

Good! Yes, you too can control a mini quadricopter device from your iPhone.

I kid ye not.

Have a look at this:

That there is a helicopter-style flying Drone, complete with on-board camera and super-genius computer to make the thing hover, take off, land and otherwise make every male within 20ft WANT one. Immediately.

Here’s how it works: The Drone creates a WiFi network that you connect your iPhone to. Doing so gives you control over the Drone’s movements. It’ll take off and hover at 1 metre height whilst it waits for your instructions. If someone bumps into it or pushes it away, it’s on-board gadgetry will stabilise it and keep it hovering whilst you feel like a Prince Among Men as you get your flying googles on.

To fly the device you simply move your phone about. The Drone’s app (that you’re running on the iPhone) interprets your movements and translates them into flying instructions. On the app, you get a real-time video feed from the on-board camera that you can use to guide the device when you can’t see it. So you could theoretically use this at the office to really wind up your colleagues in the next room without leaving your desk. Genius!

You get 15 minutes flying time from one charge.

And now let’s talk about augmented reality.

Yes, I shit ye not. Because you’re being fed back a live video image of what the Drone is seeing, the iPhone app can overlay that with all manner of different games. For example, the supplied app will allow you to fight and blow up other virtual Drones.

Or if you’d like to get sexy, you can actually do a multiplayer mode — you can recreate an aerial fight between two Drones, by using your virtual canon and missiles to (virtually) shoot down your friend’s Drone. Love it. Those are just some sample applications. You can sign-up and develop some iPhone/iPod Touch applications to interface with the Drone. I can’t begin to imagine the possibilities!

So if you’re an iPhone developer, you should immediately go and get a Drone prototype (there are going to be a limited number available from Feb 15th) and start developing super-shit-hot augmented reality apps.

Fantastic. I will be buying one of these. Will you?

Here’s a video of the Drone in action…

And the Parrot/Drone site? It’s here.

Ewan,

I have a client looking to build out mobile applications that would work on iPhone, Blackberry, Android, WinMo, and poss Symbian when possible.

Do you have a developer/development company you like that can work well within a budget? I am to get a proposal to someone today with prices and the company I was working with here in the US can’t seem to get it together…

If you know someone — or if this is you, I’m on ewan@mobileindustryreview.com. Drop me a quick overview and I’ll forward your mail directly to the chap.

I’ll publish the results shortly!

Ewan

It might be useful for some Mobile Industry Review readers looking for a new role. I thought it was rather insightful too.

Have a read:

One of the world’s leading telecommunications companies are currently looking for an Apps Business Developer

This project is aimed at the development and initial implementation of an outreach programme engaging with well known brands and persuading them to invest time and other resources to develop our apps. Also we will be mobilising the small developer’s cottage industry to contribute to the growing apps pipeline.

The successful candidate will be delivering a strategy for the generation of new apps business which aligns with the wider Global approach, and takes in all potential apps developers from the big high street brands to individual programmers working in their bedrooms.

Knowledge:
Deep knowledge of Internet, telecommunications and Hi-tech industries, with established relationships across these sectors.
Exposure to the software development benefits/barriers of mobile widgets & applications, across handset technologies and international markets
Awareness of roles of relevant industry bodies and standardisation initiatives
Strong grasp of developer management tools and widget SDKs Skills
Strong stakeholder management ability

It’s a 6-month contract with one of the ‘world’s leading telecommunications companies’ based in Newbury. It can only be Vodafone.

What I found interesting in the text was this paragraph:

This project is aimed at the development and initial implementation of an outreach programme engaging with well known brands and persuading them to invest time and other resources to develop our apps

Doesn’t this highlight everything that’s wrong in the mobile operator approach?

If there’s a market, companies will gravitate to it, provided you make the tools easily available. Apple has demonstrated this. Apple don’t have to walk about persuading companies to invest time and ‘other resources’ to make applications.

It’s patently obvious to companies whether they should or should not do it. All you should need to do is facilitate.

I wonder if this points to a future catastrophic failure at Vodafone, in the context of applications and application development.

If you have to PERSUADE companies, I think you’ve got a problem. A big problem.

And if you’re describing the applications that companies develop as ‘our apps’ — i.e. ‘Vodafone’s apps’… no, that’s entirely the wrong attitude.

It’ll be interesting to see the results in 6 months.

The Job Serve role is here.

It’s all getting exciting over at Vodafone.

If you’re a mobile developer, definitely take a look. There’s a million EURO worth of prizes to get stuck into for the best widgets.

You can find everything you need to know here: http://widget.developer.vodafone.com/, including a really, really straight-forward how-to-make-a-widget guide.

I’ll get a load of caffeine and try making a MIR widget later on.

Proving that o2 Litmus is a very responsive organisation, their top chap, James Parton, sent this answer to publish.

Over to James:

- – - – -

This week, we launched the O2 Litmus App Showdown, with a prize of £10,000. Whilst we’ve had a very positive response from the community, we’ve also received some constructive feedback on how to make the competition better.

The App Showdown is a test case and if it goes well then we will be doing more of them in the future, which can only be good news for the developer community. We admit that we don’t have all the answers, and that we were bound to make mistakes first time around. That’s why we are keen to listen to the developer community to ensure that competitions such as the App Showdown are valuable to them.

In terms of the specific observations from Simon on the competition;

There was an error in the copy about the need to submit an iTunes url to enter the competition, we fixed this yesterday, fingers crossed! Re the available test slots for developers to use themselves – we were keen to ensure we could involve as many O2 customers in the judging process as possible, any guidance on the optimum number of slots reserved for the developer would be welcome. We did speak to a number of developers in preparing the competition, but I guess everyone has a different opinion at the end of the day!

As for the third problem – bias towards O2 apps – there’s no surprise there: we are after all the exclusive supplier of iPhone in the UK and the aims of the App Showdown fits in with trying to provide the best service possible to our customers. As Simon points out in the closing sentence, the key to making this successful is involving the community, e.g. real O2 customers.

As Simon’s final comments describe, there are other ways that the competition might have run. We’ve started up a forum thread on the O2 Litmus site so that these ideas and any others that people have can be discussed. We’ll then take the best ideas and roll them out, much like Litmus does with mobile apps themselves.

If you want to hear more, see the relevant forum on O2 Litmus or get in touch with me via Twitter – @jamesparton.

- – - – -

Thank you for taking the time to respond James.

I then heard from regular reader, Simon Maddox. By day, Simon is a developer at GoSpoken.com. By night he’s a freelance mobile developer, writing apps for as many platforms as he can get his hands on. He’s also developer of the popular 0870 app for Android and iPhone, which has currently saved UK consumer, by my reckoning, at least £100,000. His views below are entirely his own.

Here’s what Simon has to say:

- – - – -

The App Showdown from o2 Litmus is, on the surface, a pretty cool idea. Submit an iPhone app that their customers like, and you could win ten grand.

But, as a developer, it looks to me as if it’s been thought out by a bunch of Marketing guys who thought “Yeah, this’ll work“, without actually running it by someone that actually knows about iPhone development first.

For example, the submission guidelines state that you should submit the app to Apple for Beta testing (their T&C’s clarify this as being able to create an Ad-Hoc Provisioning Profile), and then provide them with the iTunes URL to the app.

Had they actually tried it, or if they’d even spoken to a developer, they’d know that’s just not how the Ad Hoc distribution works. To create an Ad Hoc provisioning profile you register the devices and then tell it which App ID you want to use (Apple recommend you use com.yourdomain.* so that it will work for all of your apps).

You don’t submit the app, or even tell Apple that you’re doing it. Therefore you don’t get an iTunes URL. That’s how lots of developers, myself included, distribute apps that have been rejected from the App Store.

So that’s problem one – you can’t actually submit anything using their rules.

Problem two – anyone who has actually done any iPhone development probably won’t be able to enter anyway. In their submission guidelines, O2 say that you must have 95 ad hoc spaces remaining, all of which you’ll have to assign to the o2 judges (Apple give you 100, and you can’t delete devices from the list afterwards), but it’s ok – they’ll generously leave you five. If you’ve done any distribution this way in the past, you can forget entering the App Showdown since you probably won’t have 95 left!

Problem three – bias towards o2 apps. On the website, they give a short list of what their “customers” would like to see. I’m almost willing to bet that, regardless of what you enter, the poorly developed app that just about interfaces with the o2 Joggler will somehow end up winning.

o2 might be better off getting their own developer account, register all of the “judges” devices in that (since they’ll now have 100 spaces free) and create provisioning profiles for each developer to build into their apps. That’ll solve problem two. Problem one could be solved by asking people to blog about the app they’ve created and providing the URL to that, instead of an iTunes URL. Free publicity for them too!

That said, despite the competition’s flaws, it’s a really great thing, and one that I hope will encourage developers to create apps that customers want, instead of YAFA (Yet Another Fart App).

- – - – -

Thank you for that Simon. I’ve met the o2 Litmus chaps and I’m sure they didn’t necessarily expect this response from you — further, I trust they’ll have some perspective for you shortly.

You can find Simon on Twitter at @simonmaddox, and can (rarely — come on, more, Simon?) be found blogging at simonmaddox.com.

Update: Mobile developer Kieran also raised the same issue on his blog.

Update 2: James Parton of o2 Litmus responded swiftly here.

Don’t discount this as a ‘whatever’.

These kind of events and opportunities really can take you from relative obscurity to sitting in front of one of Nokia’s Board Members at one of the events. And with that in mind, it’s not all about winning. Even though the grand prize winner will walk away with a useful $30k. It’s about getting in the door. It’s about turning up, being seen and shaking as many hands as possible and seeing where that takes you.

As the phrase goes, ‘sitting at home in the dark ain’t a brilliant business development technique’…

There’s a ton of people reading this right now who’ve come up with a good idea. And about 99% of them are, sadly, going to think I’m talking bollocks when I say, it really is worth trying these sort of things out.

Let’s talk turkey.

* Grand Prize winner: $30,000 USD in cash; “Spotlight” placement featuring the winning application for 4 weeks on the top page of Nokia’s newly announced Ovi Store, where consumers will find the best mobile applications and content for their Nokia devices; and paid travel to demo the winning application at a Nokia-specified event in the Fall 2009.

* 2nd Place: $15,000 USD in cash; “Spotlight” placement featuring the winning application for 3 weeks on a relevant category page in Nokia’s newly announced Ovi Store, where consumers will find the best mobile applications and content for their Nokia devices.

* 3rd Place: $10,000 USD in cash; “Spotlight” placement featuring the winning application for 2 weeks on a relevant category page in Nokia’s newly announced Ovi Store, where consumers will find the best mobile applications and content for their Nokia devices.

So that’s what the winners can get, right?

Now, let’s look at the categories they’re looking for:

Internet Innovation – Individuals can submit either web applications known as Web Runtime widgets, or websites which are optimised for mobile browsing with Nokia devices.

Flash – Send us your best applications that expand the capabilities of Flash Lite on Nokia devices.

Emerging Markets and Mobile Necessities – Submit your most innovative application using Nokia platforms, ranging from SMS through Series 40 and S60 device platforms. All applications will be evaluated, including those developed using Java, Python, or open source.

Apps on Maps – This category seeks new ideas (Yes, just the ideas – completed Apps are not necessary at this stage) that harness the power of location-aware services using Ovi Maps on Nokia devices.

You can find a lot more details at the dedicated microsite Calling All Innovators.

You’ve got until the end of the month to submit.

And if you’re thinking of doing so and you’d like a bit of support, I’ll make this undertaking to anyone who participates — send me a 5 paragraph overview with screenshots (if appropriate) and any relevant web links and I’ll publish it as a post here for the few hundred thousand readers to peruse.

(I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.)

I was there in my capacity as producer of Mobile Developer TV. I met a ton of interesting people and managed to persuade most of them to go on camera so I’ll be bringing you that special edition episode shortly.

There must have been 300+ people in attendance and, although the venue provided plenty of seats, it was standing room only, especially during the presentations.

The format that organisers Kate and Mike have been using recently is roughly 6 x 5 minute presentations. So you get a quick-fire look into the minds of 6 developers within 30 minutes. Hugely compelling and very, very interesting. The format keeps everyone interested and the 5-minute limit (observed by most) ensures that the presenters deliver the salient points swiftly.

If you’d like to have a poke about the presenter line-up, here are the links:

Nokia Point and Find
Skout
Abaqus
GeoVector
GasBag
EveryTrail & Wherester
Boorah
Zhiing

You can, incidentally, check-out a preview of Zhiing in Mobile Developer TV’s episode one published last week.

I popped by the Flirtomatic London offices today to meet with founder Mark Curtis and the team. I’ve long been a follower (and fan) of Flirtomatic (check out the MIR archive coverage) and particularly fascinated with how they’ve managed to build such a massive base of users via the mobile web.

Flirtomatic is, as you might have guessed, all about flirting — not necessarily dating in the traditional sense. Mark and his team are uber-smart. They’ve got the sign-up time down to approximately 45 seconds via mobile. So if you click on an advert or if you visit via an operator portal link, you’ll be able to become a member extremely quickly. This fastidious and razor-sharp focus on the sign-up process has helped them garner a massive, massive user-base.

Mark was telling me that when they started, they used to convert just over a third of sign-ups into active users (and by active, they mean ’sends a flirt message’, not just logging in). They’ve now got that ratio up to 70% – a simply phenomenal figure.

I spent a few hours with Mark discussing his take on mobile development. The resulting interview is fantastic food for thought. Firtomatic have built a solid foundation of decent, healthy and increasing revenue through mobile web. Why? Well, he explains in some detail on camera and makes some super observations.

If you’re after some highlights, try these snippets for size:

* They users bought 14,000 virtual engagement rings in 72 hours to celebrate the leap year back in 2008.
* Don’t write off credit cards as a method of payment. 10% of Flirtomatic’s revenue is derived from credit cards — details of which are input via the mobile browser!
* Vodafone UK’s ‘free data’ day on May 1st for PAYG users boosted sign-ups 13 times.
* iPhone users are by far the longest to validate (i.e. confirm) their accounts — in some cases it takes four days for a user to login to their email to validate their account.
* The N95 remains one of their most popular handsets by traffic.
* On average within 2 hours of signing up, males get roughly 4 flirtomatic messages from other users. Females get about 20!
* They money is in visibility (i.e. users paying to improve their rankings/ratings). That point is probably one of the most incisive takeaways.
* It’s not necessarily about apps. I think a lot of developers will be very interested to understand why Mark and his team simply haven’t bothered with mobile applications as yet.

We also did a walk-about of Flirtomatic’s Towers, indeed they’re now a proper tower since new additions have led them to expand on to a second floor. Mark did a quick introduction to the staff before we sat down and got talking.

Mark’s video(s) should be up shortly. If you’d like a reminder, we’ve got a nifty function that will update you by email every time we post. Subscribe here.

(That screencap above of Mark is from the video import.)

We’re putting on an event this month in Paris, France. I’ll have more details soon — but I can say that the event will be in the last week of this month and it’s set to feature some of the hottest mobile developers in France.

Much like the previous Developer event we held back in January (at Mobile Industry Review), we’ll be interviewing every single attendee, doing some show-and-tells demonstrating their applications and publishing those in a special edition of Mobile Developer TV.

France has always had a pretty decent mobile development industry — but it’s been severely hamstrung by the day-to-day realities of the European market (e.g. working with the likes of Symbian, trying to generate revenue via premium rate text). The iPhone changed all of that, though. At Mobile Monday Paris in March, I saw a community of 300+ developers electrified by the opportunities offered by the end-to-end iTunes platform.

It’s most certainly not all about iPhone, especially in such a Nokia-centric country and continent, but iPhone is, of course, garnering the lion’s share of attention and support from newly revitalised investors.

So I’m looking forward to visiting Paris. I’ll have more details up soon, we’re just confirming the date and venue.

Meantime if you’d like to come along to the event, just drop me a note (ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv) and I’ll keep you updated.

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I’ve been using my Android G1 a lot since I arrived in America because, conveniently, my US T-Mobile sim works perfectly with it (even though it’s a UK device). I didn’t have to do any configuration since HTC thoughtfully included the T-Mobile US web settings on the device already.

So I’ve been taking pictures.

As you do in a city as nice and as varied as San Francisco.

I’d like to send them directly to Flickr. Since there’s no ShoZu service on Android at the moment (and I haven’t re-installed Pixelpipe yet) I thought I’d have a look around the Marketplace on Android.

Unlike others, I take it upon myself to buy as many applications as possible. I did a certain amount of evaluation on ‘Flickr Upload’ when I came across it. From memory it was $0.99. Or perhaps less.

I scrolled down to the comments.

On the 28th of April, ‘Matthew’ commented:

Works wonderfully. Well integrated.

.. and he gave it five stars.

I suspect Matthew is referring to the share option. When you take a photo on Android, there’s a button that pops up called ‘Share’. Click on that and you get the choice of sharing by Email, by Google Mail or — to Flickr (enabled by this application). Smart. I was warming to the concept.

I noted that it’s had between 100-500 downloads. Ok. Not a brilliant well-trodden path. I continued with the comment review.

On the 21st of April, ‘z0mbix’ commented:

Will not authorise with flickr on t-mobile/G1. Can’t get any reply from the developers em[ail]…

Er.

I’d gone off it right away.

The final comment on the app’s frontpage was a day before z0mbix’s one from Benjamin:

Exactly what I was looking for works perfectly

Hmmm.

Z0mbix’s comment put me right off. But I reasoned there must be a reason, maybe he/she didn’t know what they were doing? Afterall if Benjamin and Matthew each had a good experience, I should be ok?

Right?

As I walked out of the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco I spotted an advert I wanted to write about. I decided to download Flickr Upload there and then, configure it and get moving.

I paid the money, the app downloaded and within seconds I’d got to the main prompt, asking me to authorise my Flickr account to work with it. Fair enough.

I typed in my Yahoo account username and password and hit ‘login’.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

The screen went blank.

Er.

‘I’ve just paid a dollar for this,’ I thought, rather disappointed. I was experiencing the pain of fellow user, z0mbix.

I tried again. Maybe I typed my details wrong?

Again it failed. The app just sat on a blank screen like this:

Rubbish!

I ended up sending the photo to my email account and walked home, rather annoyed with myself.

I was annoyed because I thought I’d obviously got my Yahoo password wrong.

What self respecting developer would allow an application to go live — a chargeable application at that — which doesn’t actually work?

Then I reasoned that it must be a Yahoo screw-up and spent a good few blocks cursing them in my mind.

I got back to my desktop and immediately changed my Yahoo password to check I had it correct.

Again I tried authorising the app.

Nothing. Nada.

I’ve bought a dud.

I don’t know who is responsible. It COULD be Yahoo, entirely. But one assumes that the two other recent commenters on Android Marketplace aren’t lying and they got it to work.

I’ve tried a few times over the past few days to activate it to no avail.

So I looked up the developer online.

They’re called Macrospecs and they’re a privately-owned startup in the bay area.

Ah hah! They’ll have a GetSatisfaction page, right? Or a forum or something?

No.

Nothing!

It’s a one-page website and — ultra annoyingly — the ‘contact’ page goes straight through to their email address.

Confusingly there is absolutely no reference to the Flickr Upload application on their site.

I then had a look back on the Android Marketplace and saw that the ‘developer site’ is listed as FaceofMobile.com/Flickr. Ah hah!

No, hold your excitement.

This is the entire site:

Yup… it’s one page. It consists of three screenshots and a macrospecs logo, with no link. No contact details. No support option. Nothing.

In fairness to the developer, one wouldn’t expect that many support enquiries from an application that simply sends a photo to a Flickr account. It’s not rocket science and there’s hardly any failure points.

Except the authorisation process.

And, of course, macrospecs don’t control that, Yahoo do.

Tough luck for me and z0mbix, right? If it ain’t working, you can try contacting macrospecs but it’s rather clear they don’t want to know — and are not expecting to support any enquiries.

I hunted around and I found a support forum for macrospecs’ Face of Mobile application, a $1.99 Windows Mobile Facebook app.

I suppose I could try posting there.

But I’m not feeling very welcome — or smart for buying the app. Indeed I’ve paid a dollar for the privilege.

It’s perfectly fine for it to happen to me, I have a good understanding of the trials and tribulations of mobile development — but if this is the experience of your average consumer who’s just picked up a G1 or G2 and is expecting 100% friction-free total quality-assured service from the Android Marketplace, they’re not going to be at all impressed.

Like the ringtone marketplace a few years ago — you’ll pay once and if the experience sucks, you definitely won’t ever pay again.

What’s the right response?

Is this a FAIL on the part of the team at macrospecs? Is it a Yahoo FAIL?

Or is it an Android FAIL?

Would this have happened on an iPhone?

My name is Ewan and I’m founder and Editor.  You can find out more about me here.

After Mobile Industry Review turned subscription-only back at the end of March, I’ve been looking around for other projects to commence.  Mobile Developer TV started off as a concept in the back of my mind about 6 months ago.

Here’s the Background

I’m founder and editor of Mobile Industry Review (”MIR”), one of the world’s most influential commentators on the mobile industry.  The site published daily news and opinion for almost 3 years, reaching a core audience of 250,000 industry executives and fanatics.  MIR’s feed is integrated directly into the intranets of many mobile operators, handset manufacturers and mobile service companies.  Super reach, super influence.  Witness, for example, our ground-breaking video of the never-before-seen Nokia Test Labs in Farnborough (Over 175,000 people viewed it within days of publishing). Or take a look at the recent post I published about iPhone centric developer mindset in Silicon Valley, picked up by MocoNews, VentureBeat and the Washington Post.

I thoroughly enjoyed producing the site with a team of brilliant contributors.  In March 2009, I turned MIR subscription-only, providing the site’s on-going feed to one company.  The nature of the company’s requirement developed to the point that I was able to engage a small team of writers to deliver the on-going service.  I still retain all MIR rights and content — including the domain names and the site’s extensive reach — so I’ve been looking for another project to put these resources to good use.

Why Mobile Developer TV?

I really, really enjoy producing online video features. There’s something about ‘TV’ that you just can’t match with the written word.  It’s about seeing the person (or people), visualising their excitement and seeing just how passionate they are about their products and services. I did a lot of experimenting with the Mobile Industry Review Show — the MIR Show — and after a good few hundred hours of stress and learning, I think I’ve more or less perfected the art of brilliant online video production: Top quality HD cameras, excellent HD video hosting, super-expensive microphones — in fact, the best equipment you can buy, a bit of creativity in the editing studio (Final Cut is excellent, but iMovie, although frowned upon from the professional sector, is extremely quick).

Marry this passion for online television with my fascination with the mobile industry — and more specifically, with mobile development — and it didn’t take me long to hatch the concept.  And here it is!

The Aim

I’m going to meet the best and the brightest in mobile development — and I’m going to put them on camera.  I’m aiming to publish one TV show per week to start with.  Each show will centre on one or two people in the mobile development space.  iPhone App developers, certainly.  But I’m interested in the whole spectrum — from Blackberry’s App World, to Nokia’s Ovi, to Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace and beyond.

If you’ve ever seen any of the interviews I’ve produced in the past, you’ll know I like to keep myself out of the picture. It’s not about me, it’s about the interviewee.  In some cases I’m aiming to do a straight interview — me to the right of the camera pointing the microphone and asking questions.  In other cases, I’ll do a walk-about or a show-and-tell with the developer.

I’m interested in talking to and profiling:

• Mobile application developers
  (Platform agnostic: iPhone/Blackberry/Nokia/J2ME/Samsung/Microsoft/Android)
• Companies whose primary business is NOT in the mobile space — but who have developed or are developing mobile applications.
  (For instance: A travel company launching an iPhone app, dotcoms launching their own apps — eg. Lastminute’s FoneFood app)
• Companies who supply services to/work with mobile developers
  (Example: Providers of mobile advertising, debug/testing)

Video will comprise most of the content here on Mobile Developer TV — however in my research over the past months, it’s clear that, whilst there are a lot of developers in Silicon Valley and London (my two primary locations), there’s a considerable geographic spread of developers.  Only today I was talking to developers from Ohio, Johannesburg, New Zealand, Ukraine, Paris and Scotland.  I’d like to be able to fly into meet each — that might be a bit of a challenge in the short term though.  So to supplement, I’ll aim to publish text interviews and profiles regularly.

One developer I spoke to suggested recording his own interview on video, answering my questions to camera with his own facilities — and sending it over to me to publish.  I think it’s a super suggestion and I think we’ll do that.

Can I profile you?  Contact Me!

I’m based in London and San Francisco so I’ll be producing the majority of in-person videos from those locations.  If you’d like to feature, drop me a note.  I’m ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv — this is the best way of contacting me.  But you can also phone/text me.  My mobile numbers are:

+44 7769 658104 (UK)

+1 415 200 9515 (US)

… (I’m happy to hear from PRs too.)

Don’t Be British

Please don’t be British — that is, sit at the back and hope I’ll come across you.  I really will do my best to find mobile developers and companies to profile — I’ve already got a big list from working with MIR — but I am most certainly no genius.  So I need your help in order to profile you — I need to know you exist. So please do drop me a note if you’re keen to be profiled.  At the very least I’ll aim to send you out a list of questions to answer by email that I can turn into a profile piece here on the site. (Who are you, what are you creating/have you created, what platform, why, what challenges have you had, and so on).  Ideally I’ll arrange to meet physically to interview you on-camera and perhaps produce an application walk-through.

Got News?

If you’ve got a particular topic of announcement that you think mobile developers and those working in related fields should know about, knock me over an email right-away.

Design

I’m doing a Robert Scoble at the moment — that is publishing with a default WordPress Theme.  I’ll update it as we progress.  The content is way more important than the theme and that’s where my focus is at the moment.

Editorial Policy

As for editorial policy, I’m aiming for a macro view of mobile development.  I don’t plan on publishing code level discussions, or discussing the finer points of the Symbian operating system.  Instead, I’ll be looking at the commercial aspects of the mobile applications development sector along with the trends I’m witnessing.  The overriding focus is, of course, on profiling developers.  I’m particularly interested in talking with one-man-bands:  The chaps (and ladies) who’re single-handedly driving the massive change sweeping the industry.  That said, I’m also keen to talk to the business people — the product managers, the executive teams — about the challenges and successes in the field of mobile applications development.

This is a work in progress so I’d welcome your feedback, either below or by email.

I’ll be syndicating the output through the public feed on Mobile Industry Review so if you’re already a MIR RSS subscriber, you’ll start to get updates shortly.  You can also catch blog updates via the new Mobile Developer TV Twitter account @mobdevtv.

Standby!

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We met Tim Haysom, Marketing Director of OMTP at the MIR Developer networking event the other week (see his video). I thought it was time to catch up with OMTP and find out a bit more.

Tim Raby, Managing Director of OMTP, answers my questions.

1. Tim, we were thoroughly impressed at the OMTP BONDI concept that your colleague Tim Haysom initially discussed at the MIR Developers Event the other week. For those new to OMTP, could you first give us an overview of the organisational mandate?
OMTP was created to get Mobile Operators, Handset Vendors and technology companies, that deliver device Hardware and Software, working together to drive cross platform consistency. BONDI clearly fits this and so does our latest delivery on standard phone connectors (OMTP Common Charging and Local Data Connectivity).

2. For your one-man-band or small mobile developer who may have come across OMTP in passing, what’s the concept? What are the chief benefits you’re offering to the industry and why should developers pay attention?
Technically BONDI is about creating standard secure web API’s for use from a Browser or a Widget Run-Time. But perhaps more interestingly, this is about a number of major companies agreeing a common way forward rather than one “platform owner” driving for competitive advantage. Developers should be interested because the ubiquitous rich (PC) web is rapidly fragmenting (following the Mobile tradition!).

BONDI is a catalyst for key players to encourage mobile web technology evolution down a standard route.

To follow the PC web model so that mass market application innovation can happen but without necessarily destroying the value in the traditional mobile business.

3. You’ve got some rather big players involved. Could you give us an overview of just what companies are participating with OMTP?
The current participating companies are listed at http://www.omtp.org/Membership.aspx but include eight of the major Operators and the six of the large handset OEM’s.

4. Who’s recently joined OMTP and what are their reasons for joining?
Opera is the most recent of a number of companies who have joined OMTP as an Advisor Participant (the level at which most Companies participate). Opera is a major supplier of web technology they are naturally keen to be involved in BONDI and its ongoing development. A number of Companies will be announcing product that support the BONDI specification over the next few months.

5. Now, to BONDI specifically. Could you give us an overview?
BONDI is a set of API’s that securely opens up Device and network resident capabilities. There will be devices in Market as early as the end of 2009 that support the BONDI API’s. In 2010 it will be available on a number of different O/S platforms and on different web/widget run times from multiple Operators in many countries. Developers can wait and see what happens or engage now by developing applications against the Release 1.0 and by providing the rapidly growing BONDI community with feedback http://bondi.omtp.org/default.aspx.

6. What are the key challenges that BONDI is addressing in the marketplace?
Fragmentation of the web in mobile created by platform owners trying to differentiate their platform by adding proprietary rich APIs. As a Developer, how big is the “case statement” going to be to get Location or Presence information from a web application that attempts to run on multiple platforms and cross Operator? From a User’s point of view, how secure is access to your phones Microphone or Camera going to be after you have said Yes to a “do you want this application to … “ prompt?

7. What are your hopes for BONDI? What can we expect to see over 2009 and beyond?
(see 5. Above plus)

Hope that with addition of Developer support we can continue to work with multiple platform owners (Operators, OEMs, ODMs and software companies) to accept that “one web” is good a outcome for mobile and beyond. “Developer Pull” is key to driving adoption of a standard.

8. What else should we know?

For good to bad, BONDI is not attempting to create a standard application store with a fixed commercial model. This is about helping to create a standard web platform that will allow service innovation both technically and commercially.

OMTP’s relationship with W3C plus other web and mobile Standards Organisations is key not (just) commercial adoption.

Thanks for taking the time, Tim!

Some people, as I very well know, are not blessed with this kindred ability to use anything that has buttons. I have my Grandparents, a perfect example of the “older less inclined”, my Mum, the “not so old inclined”, and then sadly, even people who are about my age of seventeen or slightly older or younger, who are completely bamboozled by their mobile phone.

Now, it’s not surprising; in recent years or months, we’ve become inundated with technological advances, or a numerous collection of applications and abilities that our mobiles can now perform. Long gone are the days of playing “Snake” on your 3310, and thinking you were the bee’s-knees… We have the internet now!

But, what is the point in all of this, if what I read this week is in by any means shape or form, even remotely true.

Apparently, a survey conducted in both the UK and the USA has found that out of those questioned, some 45% prevented themselves from upgrading their phones due to “set-up issues”.

Following that, more surprising is that 61% of those questioned, had given up using Applications altogether because it was too complicated, and problems couldn’t be solved.

This is a very important aspect of any technological industry to bear in mind. On MIR we often to refer to people as “normobs”, in fact, I fall under that category. For the vast majority of people who fall under that category, who like those questioned have become completely perplexed at that ringing device that they haul around with them? How many of them are actually aware of the features that said mobile has, or doesn’t have?

More importantly, how is the industry going to change this? How are those like my Mum, the Grannies, or even my friends (who I try to educate in the ways of the Mobile Phone as much as possible), and the rest of them; what is going to happen to them?

To look at this logically, what is the point in having any technological advances when figures, which are pretty high, suggest that even in this booming age of computers, internet, socialising, gadgetry, and creativity, there’s an actual fear or distaste to moving forward because they simple cannot comprehend their phone.

Now as much as I would like to think we could “educate the masses” by introducing “how to use your mobile” into the curriculum, or even have someone standing in the Carphone Warehouse or Phones4U, who will happily guide through every detail of your beloved new buy… I just don’t see this happening.

Even so, whatever plan that tries to fix this obviously quite crucial problem in the market, I hope that it works!

Samantha.
samantha@mobileindustryreview.com

However, I was watching the news the other day, I think it was CNN or Sky or something, and I was half-heartedly listening; and suddenly something occurred to me about what I was seeing. The old usual reports of a foreign reporter standing with bullet-proof jacket, and some Army guys standing around them are slowly withering away…

And why is that?

Technology!

It was fascinating what it was that I saw, a man had been able to get in touch with a child over in Gaza over the internet, and was having a webcam conversation with them; and through this conversation came a live-feed, and first hand account of what is happening, without the need of invasive, and sometimes misleading (or dare I say biased) news reporters merely saying what they see.

Now this has all come about because of mobile telecommunications, and it’s only ever going to improve with better telecommunications.

What made me smile, and what made me happy is to think with the power of what this industry does, and what some other industries provide, we as a global population may some day have enough power to really create our own media – say a full scale “YouTube Revolution”.

Imagine that! And it all being down to a bit of technology.

Even more amazing than a Media Revolution, would be providing people like those in Gaza with no way to voice what it is that is happening in Gaza, with no means of communicating with the rest of the world what is happening; would be to be able to have an even better communication where civilians caught up in Political affairs such as this, can really communicate to the outside world what it is that needs to be done; and for us to be able to offer hope back to them.

And it’s things like the $100 laptop, working to improve efficiency and output of global communications, and developing new and exciting technology which can achieve this.

What’s more, is that it doesn’t have to end there. On Skype already you’ll see quite a few people trying to find ways to learn new languages via the internet, and others happily teaching in order to learn themselves. Well, why couldn’t that happen more?

“International Online Classrooms” -  I can see it now; the students would be embracing whatever technology they can get their hands on, be it the latest high-speed connectivity handheld phone, or an ultra-powerful Notebook with high-speed wireless internet, and maybe the odd person or two on their desktop… But it could happen, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t!

Maybe I am being am being tad optimistic, but I don’t like starting a new year with pessimism. But I’m also a realist by heart and by nature; I seldom overindulge in beliefs of the impossible, and I don’t believe anything that I have mentioned is impossible; and I’m pretty sure that there are more people out there could find even more better and plausible ideas than mine.

Well, a lot can change in a year, so let’s see what happens!

Samantha.
Samantha@mobileindustryreview.com