WiTec ConnectionsBanff, Canada April, 2009

Stephen King, CEOMob4Hire Inc.stephen@mob4hire.com(with stern-looking Paul Poutanen, President & Founder :)

Commercialization challenges of software development in a fragmented mobile ecosystem

We broker crowd-sourced relationships to make mobile software betterOur testing community includes more than 8,600 handsets in 100 countries on 277 operators

http://www.o2litmus.co.uk

“O2 Litmus ground breaking partnership with multi-award winning Mob4hire” O2 Litmus press release: http://www.ixplora.com/?p=3593

“O2 Litmus is Better than Apple AppStore!”http://www.telco2.net/blog/2009/02/getting_developer_communities.html

“Mob4Hire.com” Testers bid on projectsuploaded by mobile developers and provide both functional and usability testing in-market. Real people on real handsets with real opinions on live networks.

“Mob4Hire as a Platform” lets developer networks and app stores create their own branded crowd-sourced customer feedback communities

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The Big Picturei.e. Macro-Economic Environment

“Much Ado About Something”

• 6 out of every 10 people in the world have a mobile handset

• 4B subscriptions; 18% of people (700M) have two subscriptions.

3.3B mobile handset users

http://www.tomiahonen.com/

• North American adoption and usage is distinctly different than other continents• European handsets and subscriptions are often separate purchases; SIMs interchangeable, much

more operator competition

Where is everybody? http://www.tomiahonen.com/

• Many markets saturated (top 5: Italy:153%, Greece, Hong Kong, Portugal, Israel): new subs slowing• U.S. at 84%, Canada at 61% (the only country < 80% that’s NOT a developing nation)• Still lots of growth for new users in developing nations

Where are new subscriptions coming from?

http://www.tomiahonen.com/

From “no phone” to “cell phone.”Of the 280M people with phones in Africa, 260M of them use mobile handsets.

• $800M is services; Voice is still the “killer app”• SMS message revenue is 25 times bigger than ALL PC messaging (IM, email, etc...)• At $71B, Content partners (applications, movies, ringtones) is bigger than all paid content on internet

A Trillion Dollar Industry http://www.tomiahonen.com/

• The only media generation that can replicate all the benefits of the other six • The first personal media channel, permanently carried and always on: “Intimate”• Built-in payment channel• Point of creativity “eyewitness,” enabling user-generated content• Near-perfect audience data• Social and location context of media consumption

Mobile is the “7th Mass Media”: Scope + Content

Special thanks to Tomi Ahonen:http://www.tomiahonen.com/

Fragmented Mobile Ecosystem

How does fragmentation affect the customer?

The Frankenstein Effect of Fragmentation• This happened to me the week Blackberry App World launched. http://www.blackberry.com/appworld • My Carrier is Rogers Wireless in Canada. • My handset is a Blackberry Bold. The above picture is what it usually looks like.• I downloaded a few apps including Google Talk• The free Google Talk downloaded ok. But when it rebooted my system, my Bold started spewing error

messages like “java exception.” Lots of them! See next slide.

Yikes!

Background is gone as are all my photos. Icons are moved (some programs are missing). The keyboard #’s wouldn’t work, only the QWERTY letters. The “airplane” mode icon is missing. SMS’s and Emails in both inbox and sent items are gone. Email config is gone. Kept my contacts, WiFi and weather settings intact, though. WARNING!!! PAINFUL!!! Who should I blame?

This is not a good user experience ... where’s the [Not OK] button?After I downloaded/installed Google Talk, my Bold had errors & reset to default Rogers O/S footprint.

Customer Advocacy of brand and product is directly related to company growth and profit.With thanks to Dr. Bob Hayes, Ph.D. http://www.businessoverbroadway.com

What are your customers saying about you? Evangelize? Neutral? Criticize?Make Better Software = Customer Advocacy = Reduced Churn + More Customers = $$$

Company / Product Business Price Recommend?Buy from

you again?Buy something else from you? Why?

Blackberry App World App Store Free Yes, but ... Yes Yes It’s actually awesome. But, now I don’t trust it quite as much after the crash.

Blackberry Bold $$ Evangelize Yes YesLove my Bold (Pearl before that)... more productive (keyboard) & less data costs than iPhone. There’s an app store now.

Rogers Operator $$$$ Neutral Probably Probably Not related to Bold crash, so I don’t blame them; consumers will, though

Google Talk (IM) Free NONONO Yes Yes OMG!!! Reset my whole system.

www.shazam.com Shazam Free Evangelize Yes Yes Recognizes songs from your stereo or radio. Love it!!!

Ticketmaster Event sales Free No Maybe Maybe Incomplete: Doesn’t list the same events and concerts as web.

Information Week News ‘n stuff

Free Neutral No Maybe It’s ok. There’s better RSS readers that do the trick (Viigo)

Gameloft’s Brain Challenge

Puzzle Game

$7 No No NoUgh. Bad port. Graphics, gameplay and navigation don’t take advantage of the

platform. It’s not really that fun.

Worldmate Live Travel assistance

Free Evangelize Yes Yes Great for traveling, and also for doing international business

www.magmic.com Texas Hold ‘em

Games $7 Sure Yes Yes Games oad fast & good gameplay. Bought “Chizzles” and “Hold’em 3.0”

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/26/rim-ceo-buggy-smartphone-software-is-

the-new-reality/

Paraphrased from RIM co-CEO: Jim Balsillie, Jan 2009

“Expect more bugs”

(He’s just being honest ... and all vendors face the same issue)

Companies of all shapes, sizes, talent and resources are are struggling with fragmentation; this is a hard problem to solve.

But customers don’t care! They just want it to work.

Fragmentation is the inability to “write once and run anywhere.”

More formally, it is the inability to develop an application against a reference operating context (OC) and achieve the

intended behavior in all OCs suitable for the application.

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~damithch/df/device-fragmentation.htm

All Operating Contexts? That’s a lot.• Games publisher, GLU.com, made 25,000 different builds for their Transformers mobile game. There were

21,000 different builds for Europe alone.• On average, mobile developers are creating 400 different builds• Google Maps targeted 10 mobile platforms, created 100 different builds, and the boss wanted it yesterday.

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Mobile/Glu/news.asp?c=5086http://developers.sun.com/mobility/reference/techart/design_guidelines/overview.html

Fragmentation is a result of the permutations and combinations of:Mobile Ecosystem

•Handset diversity

•Software diversity:

•O/S diversity (platforms, middleware, widgets)

•Standards implementation diversity (“According to the standard, this should work ...”)

•Mobile 2.0 browser diversity (internet websites optimized for mobile phones)

•Operator / Environmental diversity

Developer or Regional•Feature variations, such as light version vs full version (related to

business model)

•User-preference diversity, in aspects such as in language, style, etc., or accessibility requirements

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~damithch/df/device-fragmentation.htm

Handset manufacturer market share• 1B handsets sold in 2008• Nokia sells 1M handsets a day (well ... not in Q1, 2009)• Most desired feature driving new phone sales is the built-in camera and it’s resolution• 30 companies in the next tier (RIM, Apple, ZTE, Kyocera, Sharp, Palm, etc...) each have a share of <2%

http://www.tomiahonen.com/

About 20,000 different handsets worldwide

Each handsetcan have up to1,500 differentspecifications• screen size & video resolution• processor performance, memory

size, accessibility• firmware versions• SMS/MMS handling• network (2G, 2.5G, 3G)• keyboard layouts / functions• additional interface components

(e.g. trackballs, wheels, joysticks, directional keys, stylus, touchscreens)

• slots• accelerometers• battery performance• bluetooth enabled• camera• GPS enabled• WiFi enabled• language support• ... and ...

http://www.wurfl.com/

Over 25 O/S’s platforms, middleware, and frameworks• Differences in platform/OS (Symbian, Nokia OS, RIM OS, Apple OS X, Palm WebOS, Windows Mobile,

Mobile Linux, Google Android, BREW,etc.), API standards (MIDP 1.0, MIDP 2.0, etc.), optional APIs, proprietary APIs, variations in access to hardware (e.g., fullscreen support, access to local storage),  and differences in multimedia support (e.g., codecs), maximum binary size allowed, etc.

• Middleware like Flash, Yahoo Blueprint• Backwards compatibility big issue

http://www.slideshare.net/lis186/smartphone-market-trends

Over 750+ Operators Worldwide• Operator’s environmental diversity from deployment infrastructure

(handset&OS branding by carrier, compatibility requirements of carrier backend APIs, gateway characteristics, opened ports, restrictions on access to outside the network etc.), local standards.

• GSMA OneAPI initiative is trying to standardize common API calls

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators

What about Mobile 2.0?

It’s not Web 2.0, but it is browser based, just like your PC internet surfing. Sort of.

And, it’s not going to fix fragmentation. Just change it a bit.

Mobile 2.0 experience differs wrt browser, platform and handset• Just like PC web, browsers have their “idiosyncrasies”; in mobile it’s worse• Mobile 2.0 sites need to be “thin” ... light on graphics, no heavy bandwidth usage, minimal fields• “30 second tasks vs. 30 minute tasks”: Corporations need both mobile sites and PC websites• Many (most) corporations are unprepared

If *Last Name is mandatory, shouldn’t I see a field so I can

enter the data?

More people access the internet through mobile handsets (1.02B) than PC’s (940M).

Within 2 years, 71% of U.S. mobile users will access the mobile internet vs. 28% in 2008*

http://www.tomiahonen.com/

* Nielson research http://www.slideshare.net/clisco/the-mobile-web-is-awesome

Significant differences in HTML handling between browsers

http://quirksmode.org/m/table.html

Fragmented Mobile Ecosystem(The Shape of Things to Come)

“Greed still exists in the world, and every company is going to try and shape things in the way that most interests them. This will lead to more fragmentation, not less.”Steve Morley, Former VP, Qualcomm, Pacific Northwest Summit, Jan 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg4c8f0XmoM

Commercialization Industry Trends

i.e. Herein lies opportunity

• Slowing handset sales due to recession and market saturation; feature phones down to 6% growth YOY 2008; more decline in 2009

• Motorola being hit particularly hard

• Carriers have maintained good margins (AT&T = 34%), handset vendors need to get a bigger piece of pie = TENSION

Handset manufacturers are feeling pinched

http://www.tomiahonen.com/

“Frenemies”

While feature phones declined by 6% YOY, smartphones, data and applications grew 37% YOY

However, in Q4 2008, there was a ray of sunshine

• Released July, 2008• In less than one year, 1 Billion downloads. • 10,000 apps downloaded every 2.2 minutes. 50M apps downloaded in one week. Per week. Every week.• Total of 25,000 apps ... our prediction: 100,000 apps by end of 2009• Plenty of room in the pool for other handset manufacturers, carriers and web off-deck app stores.

With apps, Apple has shown the way. But it’s still V0.9

• Perhaps very little. First 30 days on Apple App Store is crucial.• Or, a lot. After 10 days, #1 iFart was making $35K per day • But, only 10% of apps are still in use after 3 months; not sticky• Avg. cost per app is $2.64 (based on top 100 apps); price elastic!• Other business models: freemium, advertising (ugh), % transaction• Problem is discoverability ... getting lost in the 25,000 apps

How much can a developer make?

• Mobile Handsets vs. PC’s• Hurry ... release analog TV spectrum! The

Gold Rush for 4G (LTE or WiMax)• Device convergence: Acer moves into

smartphones, Nokia moves into netbooks• Eric Schmidt, CEO Google: “Mobile search

will eclipse PC search in a few years.”• Chris DeWolfe, CEO MySpace: “Mobile will

drive 50% of visits by 2012”• Henri Moistinac, Director, Mobile,

Facebook: “We’re starting to think that Mobile isn’t just an extension of Facebook; it’s becoming the main platform.”

• Application Stores Explode “We need developers”Growing from 250K firms to 1M by 2013

• Nokia’s Ovi Store• BlackBerry App World• Windows Marketplace• App Store for Symbian, PocketGear• Android Market• Palm Software Store• O2 Litmus (Mob4Hire)• 3rd party off-deck (GetJar, Handmark)

2009 is “The Year of Mobile”

http://148apps.com/10000/

The global demand for mobile apps is just starting; and it’s

not just about iFart.i.e. Developers’ Dream of Gold

http://techblips.dailyradar.com/story/isuppli_smartphone_sales_could_grow_11_in_2009/

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/35940.php

Mobile Application Revenue is anticipated to reach $6 Billion by 2013(U.S.A. in 2008 was $118M, global 2008 was $240M)

http://www.abiresearch.com/eblasts/archives/analystinsider_template.jsp?id=157http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/half-of-us-mobile-phone-application-

revenue-from-location-based-services-2203/

First Monday of every Monthat Metropolitan Grill in

Mount Royal6:00 to 8:00 pmJust show up!

Sponsored by:71st chapter in the world started in

Dec, 2008

http://mobilemondaycalgary.ning.com

Thank you!

Stephen Kingstephen@mob4hire.comwww.mob4hire.comwww.mob4hire.blogspot.comwww.twitter.com/mob4hire

Want to know more about Mob4Hire? View a 10 minute corporate overview

available from bnetTV.com coverage of GSMA Barcelona 2009:

http://www.bnettv.com/player.php?id=2252&title=Mob4Hire:%20CrowdSourced

%20Mobile%20Testing

Teemu Kurppahttp://www.slideshare.net/teemukurppa/platform-stage-how-to-choose-a-mobile-development-platform

Jason Grigsbyhttp://www.slideshare.net/grigs/native-vs-web-vs-hybrid-mobile-development-choices

Attributions

Tomi Ahonenhttp://www.slideshare.net/phk189/the-7th-media

Widely respected mobile guru, Tomi Ahonenhttp://www.tomiahonen.com/

Rudy de Waelehttp://www.slideshare.net/rudydw/future-of-mobile-presentation Dr. Bob Hayes, Ph.D.

http://www.businessoverbroadway.com