Sluggishly reacting applications, latency in almost everything you do, crashes, blank screens, long lag to pick up networks, buggy settings. Do you remember any of this? Sounds like some old-fashioned feature phone that was somewhat overloaded by its ambitious maker, doesn’t it? But, alas, no, it is not. This is the user experience with a one-year-old iPhone 3G, 16GB since 24 June 2010. Do you recognise the date? Then luck will have it that you have experienced the same: the grandly titled “iOS4″ update that was being pushed down your throat (or rather iTunes) to your iPhone 3G.
Apple has been hailed for poking everyone else making handsets in the eye when it came out with the iPhone: here is a newbie that got it all right and venerable industry leaders found themselves with cartons full of ostrich egg on their faces: here was someone who got it all right: combining great build quality, maybe only OK-ish specs and unsurpassed UI with a vertically integrated publishing and distribution system that made for a leap in usage of mobile devices. It was a bad slap for the Nokias etc of this world and a revelation for millions of users (even if they were not Apple fanboys).
Software and hardware need to blend well
And then it came back to bite them! I am not a techie but iOS4 on the iPhone 3G feels like someone put a little too much luggage onto too frail a porter: the things creaks and aches at every corner. Gone are the days where one could switch from one app to another in seconds, where the iPhone – in good Apple style – did what you wanted it to do without much ado but breathtaking efficiency and speed. Now, it is clunky and, well, very old-fashioned. It could of course all have been avoided: just don’t push iOS4 to the iPhone 3G (or older models). No one would have cried, you should think: if the hardware cannot handle it, it cannot handle it. Users understand such things one should think. Keep iOS4 to the iPhone 4 (even the numbers match, doh!).
Allowing iOS4 to be pushed to the iPhone 3G was one horrendous mistake!
So is this the latest marketing trick of Apple? Go and spend another £600 to buy a new one, you say? This would be utter and incredible cynicism on a scale that would put Apple right on top of the current bad-boy scale! After all, I am not talking about an old, well-worn something-or-other device; I am talking about something that was only a year ago (which is short in terms of device replacement even in the mobile space) for a considerable amount of money!
However, I think that is not it. My suspicion is rather more frightening. It very much feels like Apple starting to overextend itself and learn how complex and fragile it is to deal in the mobile space. Pushing iOS4 to devices that obviously (not only under some special and hard to find circumstances) cannot cope with it is just shoddy. Every game or app developer in the market for more than 2 years would have caught this in QA. Does Apple not have QA? Or not anymore? Or at least not enough? It might happen to you when you try too much too quickly. Apple’s passion (or paranoia?) that drives it to try and do everything itself appears to haunt it now: I mean, QA is really simple. You don’t need cohorts of phDs in elementary physics to do this. It doesn’t take you 3 years to build it up. And – last but not least – Apple appeared to being very much on top of this in the past. So what happened?
A great showcase on the importance of User Experience
I have been throwing this into the faces of Nokia lovers who never fail to point out how technically superior Nokia’s hardware is: users do not give a toss about hardware specs. They care for the overall user experience. The unhappy marriage of the 3G with iOS4 shows what this does when it goes wrong: all the fun of using an iPhone is gone. What good is it when my phone lets me down every 10 minutes? What fun if my e-mail doesn’t open for 20 seconds? How exciting if applications appear to be frozen only to open just seconds after I pressed the home button (that will kill them just in time after I saw that it did, at the end, react)? Utter frustration. Rotten user experience. Complete fail.
Apple shows us, hence, accidentally how important the overall user experience is, and this may well be my final example on this: a simple (well, maybe not so simple) piece of software turns the most coveted consumer device of the day into a somewhat lame brick! However, it also shows how incredibly important it is to match the hardware (and network environment) to what the overall product (here: iOS4) promises to deliver (non-Apple case in hand would be video-calling on the Nokia N70 back in 2005: there was just no way this would work in practice; the experience was just too horrendous).
So, dear Apple, back to the drawing board. And if I may make a humble suggestion: just push the last pre-iOS4 version back to the older devices tomorrow! First thing! Promise! Please!
To all the others: this is a great opportunity! Catch up! Double your efforts! But don’t forget that the coolest frigging hardware (12 MP cameras anyone) is useless if the UX is not matching it either!
Last week, I moderated a panel at Mobile 2.0 Europe in Barcelona on “How to Make Money as a Developer”. Interestingly, there was no developer on the panel… 
However, there were representatives from Orange’s Partner Programme and from Telefonica, and I asked them if they would move from the “classic” 50/50 carrier revenue share (no one confirmed or denied the accuracy of that classic share of course) and, whilst they were clearly not willing to confirm anything (they probably couldn’t, to be fair), they did indicate that a revision of legacy models was under way in view of the not so new anymore challenges of app stores with their – now prevailing – 70/30 split in a developer’s favour.
This week, Vodafone came out a little more openly: at MEM, their Content Services Director pondered to
give [...] it back to the developers to let them monetise it.
The big one then followed. She said – and this must be close to an industry-first – that carriers
don’t necessarily have to drive towards revenue for all of that content.
And that is the real point: I have long been arguing that the real value of (great) content to carriers may not lie in incremental revenues (be it 50% or 30%) but in softer albeit much, much more important values, namely marketing, positioning as well as customer retention.
An example: a couple of years ago, we shipped a whole suite of X-Men 3 content, game, wallpapers, tones, you name it. The launch was, of course, around the movie launch (which was tremendously successful) and we had carefully crafted marketing plans including many brand partners (20th Century Fox, Activision, Panini, etc). We managed to drive some exceptional campaigns to which carriers in a lot of countries contributed serious marketing dollars. Did they do this in order to obtain an SMS-margin-matching ROI? Not in the strict sense. To them, this was brand extension and affiliation. And, boy, did it work!
Carriers biggest trouble is ARPU and customer churn. I am not sure about the latest numbers but for years the annual churn was reaching towards a third. And that is real money. If you can reduce churn by only a few points if you provide your users with great content services, you will see your money back many times. It is (brand) marketing, not incremental revenues that make it.
Now, as long as the content guys have revenue targets, the (normally very mighty) CFO of a carrier will ask painful questions on ROI and margins; and they will always come up short. Classify it as a marketing task though, and you’re looking really good: effective marketing that should yield measurable results at no cost. Hang on: at negative cost. How cool is that? I know that many a content guy at a carrier agrees with me here. Would they ever admit as much in public? You must be kidding me.
It is therefore good to see that Vodafone starts thinking publicly about alternative approaches with a view to strengthening and/or supporting their core business. Now put it in motion, folks! 
This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is up and running. It features inter alia:
- a podcast on mobile ticketing;
- a recap of the M-Publishing event organised by the excellent Camerjam guys (which I so sadly missed due to illness);
- an interview with Tomi “Rat Hat” Ahonen on LBS and mobile marketing;
- new research on the growth of mobile data and its impact on the various parts of the value chain;
- Tomi Ahonen’s take on the iPhone 4
- and much, much more.
Oh, and they were also good enough to include my (very) recent post on people-centric design. Thank you.
The carnival is hosted over here and it is – as always really – well worth a read!
Apple’s iPhone is only a marketing fad for vain urbanites. True purists go for Android. Those who see the light in volume go for Nokia or Samsung.
All this are points often heard when one dives into the deeper echolons of most mobile tech blog or forum. Engineers throw up their hands because those “American-centric media types” “don’t get it” and only wave their flag for whatever Steve Jobs, turtle neck and all may put up onto the big screens of his church.
I am not American and I am not a media type. And I don’t wear turtle necks (well, not since c. 1989 at least). And yet, I do prefer my iPhone (3G) over my Nexus One. And this despite obvious advantages of the Nexus: better screen, quicker, haptic feedback (yes, Mr Jobs, I do like that), the concept of open source, etc, etc. So why do I stick to the iPhone? Fanboy? Marketing fad? Vain urbanite?
Here’s why: I have been trying to set up my Nexus so it will do what my iPhone does, and I am not talking of playing a fancy game or running some other app that is not (yet) available on Android. I am talking about the two key things I need a phone for (41-year-old non-techie I am), and that is phone calls and e-mail; calendar (with sync) is important, too. For the former I need my address book, and I need it to sync properly. For the latter, I need my (admittedly too many) e-mail accounts set up on my device and syncing properly. As to calendar, wait for it below. Alas, two very different experiences:
- On the iPhone, you do the following: 1) plug the phone into your computer, 2) answer “yes, please” when iTunes asks you if it should sync contacts and e-mail addresses, 3) get yourself a cup of coffee, 4) walk off.
On the Nexus, you’re OK (-ish) if your life evolves around Google. With a Gmail account and associated contacts (and/or calendars), you’re sort of OK. It does all that. Now – shock, horror – I do not actually send all my mail from Gmail and my contacts are mainly dealt with in my address book (take Outlook or whatever you want if you’re a Windows user). And I use iCal and not Google Calendar. And so it starts: there is no desktop application that would help me do this. On a Mac, the phone is not even recognised when you plug it in (and that is a rare thing on a Mac; is this another piece of Apple vs. Google? I don’t know but I doubt it). So you are finding yourself setting everything up by hand! Entering the POP3 and SMTP (or IMAP) server addresses, user names, passwords, etc, etc for seven e-mail accounts is no fun. And (remember I am not a techie) invariably leads to some box checked wrongly here or a typo in a password there and, kawoom, nothing works. I can set up a Google Calendar/iCal sync BUT that will only sync the specific Google Calendar bit between the two, and not any of my other (work, home) calendars. I can sync my address book with Google, so that works. The whole procedure took me the better part of 45 minutes, including lots of corrections and swearing and led to me abandoning a half-configured beauty of an Android phone. Great result.
So why is that?
My answer is: because they design it with engineer-centric design. And that is wrong! Why? Well, because most people are not engineers! An engineer thinks something along the following: I am Google and we love the cloud. Therefore, I will design everything so that it will adhere to that principle and will – in a purist kind of way – design everything in a way that you can beautifully and seamlessly set everything up – if and as long as you use all the wonderful Google services we have. And if you don’t get that, you’re not worthy.
The same works with Nokia: we’re Nokia and we have the best hardware, the best distribution and an incredibly good and powerful plethora of services around it (we did spend time, resource and money after all to become mighty competitors in maps [Navteq], music [Comes with Music], apps [Ovi - and the many iterations before it], etc). I will therefore design everything in a way that I can let this hardware shine as best I can; I mean: we had video calls since 2005, for elk’s sake! And if you are too dumb to configure everything in a proper way and cannot find the destination to where your downloads were stored, you’re not worthy.
Apple looks at things a little differently (and it is not only for the better although, for most people, it is): they provide a tool that brings everything I need over to my phone just like that. Job done. Easy! They will look at whatever tools they need for this. And if it means extending iTunes (which, yes, I know, they had already) to accommodate syncing data other than music and video to something other than a computer, than so be it. In that, they follow their own philosophy as slavishly as the other guys do but they do design it from a people-centric rather than an engineer-centric point of view. And that is why it works so well for people that are not (also) engineers.
They key point is this: Apple does not try (or at least not in your face) to change what people do. If I want to run my e-mail off 5 different domains, then so be it. If I prefer my contacts to sit on my disk rather than in the cloud, that’s fine. They’ll give me tools to facilitate doing what I do already and don’t lecture me on what I have to do to make it work. That this brings about subtle changes in user behaviour is fine: if you convince me gradually that things work better one way rather than another, I might be converted. But to tell me “my way or the highway” does not work! Ever!
The downside is Apple’s control mania, which blocks things (sometimes fairly questionably) because they are (or only might) be out of their control. And this is where Google, Nokia and all the others could score: try to combine things! If you would look at how Apple does things, and then – at the very end – you provide a door (doesn’t have to be a trap door, can be a flashy entry portal) to the innards and machine room of your device, so you can show off whatever you want and open the marvels of technology to those who can and want to handle it – so they can turn their super-smartphone into an uber-super-smartphone. But do leave normal people alone.
In the post-iPhone era, things have changed already (a little): you now get hidden installers (that do not ask you 100 questions on where you want to do what and where and under what penalties and with which risks), you get better interfaces, etc. BUT the default is still engineer-centric and not people-centric. Improve this, and the iPhone killer can be yours!
Image credit: http://www.ntamco.com/main/images/stories/design-is-a-behaviour.jpg
This weeks Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted over at mobiEnthusiast (with a strikingly familiar WordPress theme), and it comes with a lot of goodies, amongst which a stat-packed post on mobile money (and one on why banks need to fully understand it), Ajit Jaokar’s take on net neutrality, the iPad as a spoke in the mobile wheel, a look iAd vs Google/AdMob as well as two podcasts from carnivalist extraordinaire Peggy Salz: A Thomson Reuters SVP suggesting mobile is about companion products and Handmark’s Paul Reddick on why a good brand and a great app may not be quite enough.
Last but not least, my post on the state of mobile games on Android has been included.
So go over there and have a good read. It’s here.
Gartner published the latest smartphone numbers for Q1/2010 (or so I read), and it is testament to the continuing rise of this segment: sales increased by nearly 50% year-on-year (and do remember that there was this recession-thing last year). Total sales were 54.3m units in the first quarter of this year. Not too shabby!
On the OS side, the rising stars are Android (9.6% global market share from 1.6% a year ago), which is now bigger then Windows Mobile (and it took it only a year!) and iPhone (15.4% vs 10.5% in Q1/2009). The silverback gorilla still is Symbian which dropped to 44.3% from 48.8%. Blackberry is also down (albeit only slightly: 19.4% from 20.6%).
Here’s a table:
According to a recent report, Android has zoomed past Apple in US smartphone OS share, taking the #2 spot with 28% behind Blackberry (36%) but now ahead of Apple iPhone OS with 21% (and, yes, I know that Apple somewhat lamely queried the accuracy of this). Be it as it is, Android is growing (and we all knew that, did we not?). According to Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, the company now sees 65,000 new phones being activated per day; this equates to a run rate of 23.7m for the year.
This is good news for handset manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and Samsung (all of who are shipping successful Android devices) as well as Google (which is fairly tightly embedded in the whole thing) but does it also reflect on the wider ecosystem of developers producing applications and services for the platform?
The main points that are usually mentioned are:
- Low overall numbers: Digital Chocolate’s CEO Trip Hawkins moaned the company sold less than 5,000 units of its hit game “Tower Bloxx” on Android Market, which was indicative for the lack of uptake. If that is so overall, may remain to be seen. I beg to take into a account that Android as a platform is fairly new and the overall install base is still smaller than its competitors.
- High price-sensitivity: according to an AdMob survey in January 2010, 12.6% of Android apps are paid vs. 20.4% on iPhone OS; the same survey revealed however that the average monthly spend was actually similar on Android ($8.36) and iPhone ($8.18) though higher on iPod Touch, which runs the iPhone OS, too ($11.39).
- Return policy: Google allows users to return an app for a full refund within 24 hours of purchase. This is seen particularly onerous for games (a lot of which can be played start to finish inside that time frame).
- Discovery: developers feel Google fell well short of Apple on this one. There is no possibility to discover apps from outside a mobile device (i.e. no iTunes) and Google has not really done anything in terms of marketing either (very much unlike Apple).
- Ease of purchase: I would like to add ease of use of the buying process. Registration with Google Checkout is a far, far cry from setting up an iTunes account. This will very likely change very, very soon as Google will add carrier-billing now that it decided to move distribution of its branded Google Nexus One from D2C web-only distribution to the usual carrier model.
So what about it? Let us not forget how young Android is – even compared to the adolescent iPhone. The platform launched from an install-base of zero some 18 months ago, with the HTC G1 being the only device out there – and available through a single US carrier, T-Mobile (with a market share around 12%). Whilst I do not want to take anything away from Apple’s superior accomplishments with the iPhone, the growth of Android is not too shabby either! And with a plethora of manufacturers deploying Android-based handsets now (cf. the growth numbers above), Android is likely to be powering into the fore even more (irrespective of whether or not the above stats on it overtaking iPhone OS in the US already being true).
Price-sensitivity is not actually as bad as people think: the aforementioned AdMob survey shows nigh identical average spending patterns. Personal impressions may again be hampered with by early experiences: be reminded that, initially, there were only free apps out there. They will surely still be hanging around, but will they also for much longer?
Apple has always been extremely scrupulous on approval of applications on its platform. And whilst this may now be held against it every now and then (e.g. in the case of nipples or Pulitzer-price-winning political cartoons), it has helped it to uphold a fairly high standard of quality, which Android was lacking (initially) and which even led to “crap-filter” apps. One can however safely assume that this will change once the market size improves: Apple’s margins might be superior to everyone else in the world but that does not mean that the margins game developers can achieve with it are the same. With Android OS primed to expand at a much faster pace, the numbers will clearly speak for it, and – I would posit – that will bring more and more quality to the store, with the fads sinking fast.
Also, do not forget the big brands: they do not necessarily care for a small share of the audience only. Whilst Android was fledgling and just starting up, they may have held back but, ultimately, they are about reach, and Android is certainly bound to deliver that. I would therefore suggest that we will be seeing an influx of large brands (gaming and otherwise) onto the Android platform very soon, and this will also help user orientation as to what to go for and what not.
The discovery of apps will also be helped by the more open nature of Android. There have been a number of announcement for curated stores by carriers (e.g. Vodafone, Orange, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, etc.), and these will certainly not be allowing a free for all! Besides that, the app store model does per se pose some challenges on developers: the more successful a platform (and/or store) is, the harder it is to be discovered. One might need to look for other solutions in that respect…
The billing side of things is bound to improve, too. With carrier-billing around the corner (cf. supra), this will get easier and better. And also easier and better than it is on the iPhone: charges will simply appear on your carrier bill (smart pipe anyone?). Besides that, the business models for games are undergoing significant changes anyhow: Freemium takes centre-stage, and so it should: the model allows people to try a game out and be charged for it only when they know that a) they like it, b) what they are being charged for (e.g. that coveted sword, a couple of precious lives, or that cool background theme).
Remains the return policy. I have been raising this with Google, and it must be pointed out that similar things exist on the iPhone (they’re just “better” hidden). So besides the obvious (Google’s good intentions came back to haunt them), it is also time to think of new business models (cf. Freemium). It is not something constrained to Android: transparency requires you to deliver value. If you do, there are good and transparent means to monetize that value; and users will follow.
So, yes, there is game in Android. If you don’t believe it now, just wait for it!
Apple has released an App Store Facebook app (which was aptly tagged with: “there’s a Facebook app for that”). This is a nifty move as it allows Apple a canvas from where to make discovery of apps as well as features and promotions somewhat easier.
It is noteworthy though that Apple leaves its trusty closed environment (comprised of Apple hardware, iTunes at large and the App Store) to turn to another platform for help in resolving the increasing discovery dilemma. The (Facebook) app racked up over 85,000 in a few days already, which is already 10x the number the good folks of MPlayIt managed to assemble for their iPhone Arcade, which does similar things (and, yes, I am sure they won’t be too happy).
It also highlights the increasing shift towards social discovery, and Facebook is – in my opinion (but then, and this is a disclaimer, given the work I do with Scoreloop, what do you expect?) only a first (albeit good) step: people care about what their friends say, play, do, recommend. And it is this community you need to unlock to get closer to access the social graph in ways that are meaningful to the single person. Where better to do it than from within a game or app though?
But until then: good move, Apple!
The UK arm of Orange, the France Telecom-owned operator that is merging with T-Mobile’s UK bit, today offered a lot of news on the mobile games side. They made an announcement on the introduction of not less than 3 different gaming services that they will be launching over the next couple of weeks:
- Playtomo is a social gaming service to be used within the users’ social networks (e.g. Facebook; no others were mentioned). Users can download the app (?) from Orange’s portal and then share scores etc on the social network of choice. It sounds a little like a “posh Facebook Connect” solution (and this is not meant derogatory at all!). Friends can be invited from any UK network operator.
- Games Zone is a subscription-service where “just” £5 per month buy you two games and a 20% discount on all others. It also offers “exclusive competitions”.
- The third offering is a little unclear to me: Orange will launch the aptly called “Orange iPhone Games” offering, which will feature games that are “designed specifically or published by Orange for iPhone customers”. They say it will include a variety of game genres as well as the aforementioned Playtomo. Now, this one, I am not sure about… Orange clearly looks to bolstering their brand (or, perhaps, use their brand as a lever to lift otherwise unbranded games into the limelight) but this seems like a tough proposition. It is an interesting one, too, though as it would seem the first time an operator steps into the ring as a publisher amongst many. Watch this space…
The really uplifting thing about this is that Orange clearly recognises the significance of games to their overall offering and playful interaction is – as I have often pointed out – likely to be a driver for interaction between people in the mid- and long-term.
Finally: do you think this gives any hint as to which brand will survive the merger of the Orange and T-Mobile UK operations?
Back in summer last year (when there was a whole lot less rain), I looked at comparing the mobile web to mobile apps. There is quite a discussion raging on which it will be. The Church of Jobs raving on about their uncountable number of app downloads on the one hand, and the brave warriors of ubiquity on a technical level on the other.
Asking the right Questions
I would posit that there are three distinct issues to be discussed:
1. What is the web?
2. What is the mobile web and is it distinct to the web?
3. What about the content and its context (irrespective of platform)?
Every attempt to an answer should really start from the point of the user (who, I am aware of that, more and more becomes a creator at the same time) because, without them, there is not much of a (commercial) point to it.
Now, distinct to what old lore may have, users do not tend to care for technology much. They care for what technology allows them to do (or not to do). I therefore think the first question to be asked is: can the web do things better than an app (or, indeed, vice versa)? When you then start looking at what is being done (and what users may want to do if and when technology allows them to in a convenient and accessible way), you will come to a couple of easy conclusions.
The web in itself is just one huge content repository,
… which is – currently – being accessed predominantly by browsers. Some questions on this:
- Has this always be that way? No. Pre-web, there were libraries with clever people in them that could help you find what you needed. With enough time, you would eventually get close(r) to the truth.
- Does this always have to be that way? No. Text input via keyboards is not an “intuitive” way of communicating (the old folks here may remember the finger that hovered like a hawk above the keys of an Olympia). May touch control be a game changer? Later more on this…
Prior to Google, people search through catalogues, and they thought that this was an awesome improvement over having to run to libraries and stuff in order to find things. Along come the Google fairies that deliver the same more easily and quickly, and everyone now feels that catalogues are a little quirky and very old-fashioned indeed.
This is to illustrate that the packaging and connection into discovery mechanisms are more important to the usability of the content than its actual delivery. Ease of access matters as, otherwise, there is, well, none.
The mobile web is the web, the web and nothing but the web.
It only so happens it is being accessed from a device with a smaller form factor (that is, until H&M starts shipping those iPad anoraks with monstrously big pockets next autumn). Increasingly, browsers available for mobile devices render web content originally formatted (not created!) for larger devices for the smaller screens. This does not, however, mean that they are the best way to deliver content to a small device.
One big thing speaking in favour of a unified web platform (including on mobile devices) to deploy content is, of course, volume and unit costs: all other things equal, the cost of deploying via a unified web platform is significantly lower than on others (no need to build custom solutions for every man and his dog and unit costs drop to virtually zero very quickly. This is arguably the key argument in favour of the web but I would suggest that it will only work if you can deliver at least as well as other routes of deploying that content offer to.
The usefulness of content is, per se, independent from the device.
In other words, device constraints have, per se, nothing to do with content being accessed, used, consumed, processed. By way of example, who would have thought that people would read a book on the go in the early 90s? Doesn’t seem to be a big thing anymore today, does it? And why not? Because we got used to solutions that make this convenient.
It is a question of packaging and approach that will determine how well (or poorly) access and usage of content on any device works. If you call it an app or a widget or whatever else does not matter. Most people just do not care. They look at how easy it is to retrieve the latest weather forecast. If an app does that more quickly and comfortably, they’ll use that. If a widget does the same thing, they’ll choose what they like more. And if you can deliver the same thing as easily, as comfortably, as quickly and as discoverable on the web, they might just do that.
Not everything is delivered best on the web
Now, the web is big, it is very big indeed but it is unlikely – despite of what Apple tells us – that there will be an app for every web page. Then again, does there need to be? No. Why not? Because not every web page will be accessed from mobile devices or, rather, will not need to be accessed from mobile devices in numbers large enough to be of commercial relevance.
Hah, I hear you say, he is taking a short cut here: the above implies that, if there is a need to access content from a web page, an app is the better solution. And, yes, you are right. But I will come to this later.
Sometimes, the web does not even work well through a browser. Google Earth is one of these: it is a desktop application because of functionality constraints over the web. It is connected, mind you.
Not everything is best delivered through an app
The equation works around the other way, too. There are things I will normally access through a browser, simply because it would be too onerous to have a single app for all web pages I access. Moreover, there are indeed web pages (this blog included) that use nifty code (don’t ask me; it’s run through WP plug-ins) to render content in a more useful way for smaller devices. Would you care much for a “Volker on Mobile app”? Probably not. Because I only update this blog a couple of times a week, and it probably does not generate enough value-add to merit the (presumably) superior functionality you could deliver with an app.
Some things don’t work on Mobile, or do they?
Did you ever use Google Earth via its iPhone app? If not, let me tell you that is a pretty poor experience compared to the wow-feeling all of us will have felt the first time we played around with it on their desktop app. Why? Because it just doesn’t translate properly. Imagine watching Independence Day on the iPod Touch: you’d get cute little spaceships but not really the awe-inspiring size Emmerich had in mind when shooting it.
Both of these lack of one thing mobile can never deliver, namely the big screen. They are, in their current packaging, unsuitable. This may not however apply to subsets of the content and/or information embedded in them. Google Earth may provide useful data that, if re-packaged, delivers a powerful and good user experience on a mobile device, too.
Functionality and Usability are King and Queen
Almost all considerations result from and in questions of functionality and usability. On devices with larger form factors and constant high-bandwidth connections, a lot of rich content can be appropriately delivered via a web browser. The same cannot (yet) be said of mobile devices. Even with 3G, performance of rich media can often be shoddy. Poor user experience = frustration = low or no usage.
With 4G on its way, this may change considerably. With down-speeds North of 10 Mbps to your mobile device, there is a lot of rich content that you can get to your device in no time (or, rather, real time). That would be functionality solved then.
In the short and medium term, I see, however, two other constraints, and these are a) usability from a device perspective and b) usability from a user perspective.
Currently, a device running constantly on a high-speed data connection sucks battery life. With an iPhone already running on something like 30 minutes when in full use (OK, I exaggerate, and, yes, I do know that Nokias do better – but then, they are not as usable [anymore]), this is a non-starter. People will not do it. Once this is solved (and this is a question of when, not of if), this goes away, and that will be a huge constraint removed.
The other obstacle is usability from a user perspective. What does an app actually do? It pre-packages content. And because it (or some of it) is already in there, you don’t have to download it again. It also allows you to build in specific input mechanisms that optimise use for the mobile device (and how this impacts uptake, the iPhone has shown!).
Touch as a game changer?
Touch control is very much on the fore. And it makes perfect sense: that stylus just seems to dangle on the end of one (OK, normally two) of your limbs, it’s always on, it’s always with you (quite literally at arm’s reach) and you learn how to control it from pretty early on in life. Heck, it’s even been used to get us onto this earth in the first place (or so some people believe).
Touch control then also does away with a few constraints in particular on mobile screens (where mouse control, touchpads, etc are not normally readily available nor as useful as they are on a desktop). So once HTML5 is widely deployed (which – I am told – makes the UI life within web pages a whole lot easier), the usability thing might just go the way of the mobile web.
Touch control (and other nifty things; check here for another Apple patent on finger-based input using the camera) then propels the usability forward (or back? the first maps were arguably drawn with fingers in the sand…), and this will be quite helpful – in particular also on the smaller device.
Until then, build apps that incorporate controls that make the user’s life easy (or at least easier). If you call them apps, widgets or whatever else you can come up with, doesn’t really matter…
We said it before: mobile is the biggest mass medium on the planet, and now game developers (and not only the sometime masochists that have been there for years) flog to it. According to a fairly large survey by GDR (which can be yours for too many dollars to count and has been reported about here) among 800 developers, a quarter of them are now making games for mobile phones with most of them (namely 75%) – surprise, surprise – choosing the iPhone as their platform of launch. This is doubling last year’s figures (apparently).
The iPhone and its non-phone sibling, iPod Touch (and you have been reading that a year ago here, here and here) are proving a more attractive launchpad onto portable gaming platforms than dedicated gaming systems like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.
The reasons will be the same as they were a year ago: a platform that is relatively easy to work to and a simple distribution model. With the number of downloads Apple continues to pile up, it is no wonder that developers from “traditional” platforms (PC downloadable, online, etc) are attracted to that. They will also be less scared of the marketing challenges since they had had to market their games in the whole wide oceans of the Internet previously (i.e. there were no carrier safe havens with feature slots). Whilst this does not mean that every traditional developer’s games will be successful on the app store, the threshold to enter is lower.
It will be interesting to see if the wave will roll further into other “smarter” platforms, including Android, Windows Mobile (see the latest rumours for WinME 7, including full Xbox Live gaming implementation here), Symbian Maemo and Blackberry. With the device numbers clearly speaking in favour of that, platforms becoming more accessible and, last but not least, with easier paths to the users via OEM app stores, this is to be expected. Good times for mobile gamers!
Everyone’s favourite fashion accessory maker Krusell has published its top 10 list of mobile phones assessed by counting the number of pouches for various handsets again. So without any further ado, here’s the list:
1.(1) Apple iPhone 3G
2.(6) HTC HD 2
3.(4) Nokia E52
4.(2) Nokia 3720
5.(10) Nokia 6700 Classic
6.(5) Nokia 5800
7.(3) Nokia 6303 Classic
8.(-) Nokia X6
9.(9) Samsung B2100
10.(5) Nokia E72
() = Last month’s position.
It is as always: You tell me if this is representative (I would tell you it is not). But since hard numbers are so hard to come by, I thought I’d publish the soft (pouchy) ones instead. So there you go…
Nokia recently shook the world by starting to provide its Ovi Maps app including turn-by-turn navigation for free. And only just under 2 weeks later, it announced that users have downloaded the app more than 1.4m times. Good stuff.
The numbers led some people (Nokia’s Vanjoki as well as various industry pundits) to claim the dawn of Ovi downloads had arrived. I beg to differ, and here’s why:
1. A mapping application with turn-by-turn navigation cost, until very recently, anywhere between $30-80 a pop. And all of a sudden it is free. It is a little akin selling a Porsche Cayman for the price of a VW Polo: people will jump through any number of hoops for that. This is not proof that the download boom has finally also arrived with proud owners of Nokia phones; it merely shows that this is too good an offer to decline.
2. 1.4m downloads across the Symbian install base of c. 300m is not actually that impressive a number. To put it into context: a simple ad-funded game, Waterslide Extreme by German high-end development house Fishlabs, which is also a free download, clocked on the iPhone more than 10m downloads. As far as I am aware, the developer still sees around 40,000 downloads per day. And this is a long time after its release and for an app that fills significantly less of a need than satellite navigation. But even if one leaves aside this last bit (which is taking a very favourable view – no ceteris paribus here), Ovi Maps would need to hit roughly 100m downloads before it could say it was, pound for pound, as successful as Waterslide Extreme (NB: this is not exactly true because Nokia only supports some 20m devices to date).
3. It is not actually proof that the Ovi Store works as users can also download the app via the Nokia Website or via the “SW Update” application on the phone. At a time when the store still needs 90 seconds (measured on an N97 running on a Vodafone UK 3G network) and more to even load the opening screen, I struggle to believe that the store will see an uptake across the band.
4. It is likely being a bit of a one-off: Nokia also announced that, from March, every Nokia will come pre-loaded with the app.
Now, to clarify things: it is great news for boosting awareness of mobile phones as location-aware devices, and the pre-install on future phones will help that. It is likely that this will contribute to the fall of the dedicated satnav sector in much the same way Nokia’s landmark deal with Carl Zeiss lenses (and the resulting higher image quality of photos taken with your phone’s camera) was a doomsday scenario for the lower end of the digital camera market.
Also: Ovi Maps looks like a VERY good app: it covers more than 180 countries (car & pedestrian navigation: 74; traffic: 10), it is available in a whopping 46 (!) languages. It includes 3D landmarks for 200 cities around the world and incorporates Lonely Planet and Guide Michelin city guides. It is good, no doubt!
Finally, Nokia started early with the mantra of location-awareness. It was just that it had not executed particularly well to date. I know there is probably much more in the works than is visible to the untrained eye (or any other eye not from within the company) but the company does need to ramp up here since its hard-earned (and well-deserved) fame is/was beginning to fade quickly.
It would be fantastic if the world market leader would see uptake of applications rise sharply. I would very much like to ask them though not to fool themselves into believing that the store is not so bad after all only because of one successful application on it. There is a lot of work to do. The Ovi Maps case simply shows that one does not have to be a crazy Apple fan boy to be craving cool and useful apps. So, dear Nokia, continue to study the app store and try solve the shortfalls of the Ovi Store. It’ll be good for everyone!
We’re in full swing in the conference season, and next week, one of the more exciting conferences in the game space opens its doors in pretty Hamburg again: Casual Connect Europe, the old world iteration of the event by the Casual Games Association gives a fantastic cross-section of the state of the game across platforms. There are a number of strands to follow, including mobile, where a lot – unsurprisingly – centers around smartphones and the iPhone as well as the change to ecosystems that app stores but also the higher (actual) connectivity of these newer handsets have brought about.
I will be there, too (attending and speaking). So if you are in town (or want to get a good grip on the latest and greatest in the casual games space, head over to Hamburg and give me a shout.
Today seems to be the day of “the others”, huh? First Android, now Symbian. But the news are too significant to ignore:
Nokia’s app store Ovi is now clocking 1m downloads a day. Make that 300m p.a. Compare this to Apple’s, what, 5.7m per day. That was c. 1 year ago though, so let’s double that, shall we? So, 1/10 then shall we say?
However, Nokia and its much maligned Ovi Store shows that it can actually starts flexing its muscle (what the law of numbers can mean, I showed on the example of Vodafone: its app store is bound to deliver – even on the abysmal uptake of legacy J2ME devices – some 200,000 downloads a day).
Nokia says it is growing 100% month-on-month, and with this pace would overtake Apple in the near future. Doable? Almost certainly! Why? Because of the law of big numbers. Nokia has about 5x as many smartphones out there as there are Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices combined, which of course means that Nokia would overtake Apple in terms of total app downloads when each Nokia smartphone user would only download 1/5 of what iPhone/iPod Touch users download. Same fun? Arguable…
I do not know how many devices come preloaded with the Ovi Store but this has always been a huge driver: embed and prosper. Nokia confirmed as much, too. But let’s only assume that it is a tiny fraction (none of the legacy devices out there had it embedded, that’s for sure). And it shows you the potential: Nokia has a whopping 1.3bn phones out there (yes, you heard correctly), and let only a fraction of these use the Ovi Store, you are looking at a massive number, outstripping Apple immediately. Now, I doubt that they will outstrip the App Store in terms of apps per user but there is no team that plays football as well as FC Barcelona, and the others don’t give up either…
Nokia has made a lot of mistakes recently, with its stores, and others: to come out with something that was thought to be “good enough” is bad: strive to be the best at least, will you? Incidentally, it might have avoided the scrambling it finds itself in since the Apple app store launched. Hah, who would have thought? But let’s be fair: Nokia went about its business better in the past, it has unprecedented scale. Examples? What is the best-selling consumer electronics device of all time? The Nokia 1100 with more than 200m sold devices). Does anyone remember sub-10 Megapixel digital cameras? Well, there are few left, you see. Nokia killed that market by putting out camera phones with Carl Zeiss lenses: good, good stuff. I was in the room of the hotel in Zell am See when they laid the growth curve of camera phones over the shrinking sales curve of digital cameras. Impressive! Stand-alone PDAs? Gone. GPS devices? Hardly existing outside phones anymore (even Tom Tom satnav devices are offered with 50% discounts this Christmas).
It’s not over yet, it is only the beginning! Oh, and then there will be the mobile web to come, huh? Just wait for it!!! It’s bigger than the “other” Internet already (warning: this is one of Tomi’s monster posts… !
