I have read many articles with people saying that iPad is not more than a bad idea. Some critics say that the bigger size is as problem, the lack of a camera is another one, and so on. The problem, indeed isn’t with the iPad design, but with these people’s vision.
iPad wasn’t designed to be a computer or a mobile device. iPad was built to replace newspapers and magazines! Think about it, how much money could be saved if all content producers from newspapers and magazines could sell their content without needing to print nor distribute their stuff.
In a short period of time, book readers won’t have to buy books and put them on a shelf anymore. Newspaper readers would be able to read all newspapers they want still in their bedroom. With cheaper production costs, no risk of producing more copies than they would sell and no need to pay transport fees anymore, digital copies will cost less than printed content. As if wasn’t enough, less printing will reduce the trees cut and reduce global warming. With all this, paper published content will be gradually reduced and finally become collector’s stuff in a few years, like CD is today.
It’s remarkable the ability of Steve Jobs to see the future and put Apple one step ahead, time after time.
So if your job is to print, sell or deliver paper-based content, better start to find other things to do. There will be no space for many of your kind in the future.
Nowadays we can see thousands of mobile applications on the market. Most of them are made to the iphone platform, but we can find relevant numbers in the other ones also.
Althought the high number, if we deduce the unsuccessful ones, there will be only some dozens left.
We can divide them in four main categories: entertainment, personal utilities, branded marketing and corporate applications.
Each category has its own challenges but there are some critical success factors that applies to all of them:
1st: Perceived value – Without it, users won’t install the app.
In a world full of spywares, people just don’t feel safe to install unknown applications on their computers or cell phones.
As if this wasn’t enough, many platforms especially javaME, shows warning messages like “Application is untrusted and may be harmful to your phone” on the install process.
With all of that, most users only install applications they perceive real value.
But value means different things in each category.
In entertainment apps, value is the amount of fun it produces.
In personal utilities, value is how useful the app is.
Branded marketing applications usually include personal utilities or entertainment parts, and some bring both.
Corporate applications only succeed if they bring productivity, the main value in this category.
2nd: Usability – If it’s not easy to use, users won’t use them.
Some people may think that usability is easy to design and build, but don’t forget the differences between the phones.
They don’t share the same user interface, they don’t have the same screen resolutions, they handle user input differently (numeric keyboards, touchscreen, qwerty keyboards, trackball, etc) and their hardware have different weaknesses and strengths.
Now, with all that in mind, think again about building a fast application with an intuitive user interface. Pretty hard, isn’t it?
3rd: Compatibility. If you have only a few compatible phones, you will get only few users.
With the huge growth of the apple store, it is possible to have a sucessful app building it only for the iphone’s platform. But think about Apple’s market share… is it ok to forget all the other users?
But the problems are opportunities too, the market is growing, the phones are getting more powerful and the stores are popping up.
Here at Konkix we have created a platform that works with all current major mobile platforms (JavaME, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Iphone) with great usability and stability, so expect new products very soon!
Many years before the first iPhone break in the stores or Google even think about making a mobile OS, J2ME enabled phones were already in the market and mobile carriers already sold apps and games to their users.
It was the beginning of content download age and the money of these sales start to become relevant in the carriers receipts.
At this time, the mobile phones’s internet was so slow (when available) and hardware capabilities so small that almost only offline games could deliver a good user experience. In such a world, most carriers blocked device’s resources for “untrusted” JavaME apps and games changing java security in phone’s virtual machine. They have done this in the name of security but the real intent was to avoid users buying or using apps without paying them for that. The feature was used to monopolize the market.
Because of the stunning market growth, many small companies started to develop to JavaME and because the device’s blockings they were forced to arrange a deal with carriers. Unfortunately, carriers didn’t have time to certify all content they were asked to so some companies started to make catalogs, aggregating smaller companies content and dealing with carriers. These companies are called mobile aggregators.
At this time if you were a developer or a small company, you needed to build your game or app by your own, port it to as many devices you could, deal with the aggregators to ask them please to put your app in their catalog and pray to receive a good position on the carriers deck. If everything went ok and your app have a good sale, you would receive 10-15% of the money after some months, carriers would receive 50% and aggregators 30-35%. Don’t forget your app could easily sell almost nothing because a bad position on the deck or another reason. The investment must be done by developers and only a few could reach ROI.
As the years pass by, hardware and internet connections became stronger and some new technologies have appeared and gained market share. Smartphones with Windows Mobile eating palm’s market, Iphone with this fantastic user interface and Google’s Android are good examples.
There is not so easy to block functionalities in these new platforms and in some of them it’s not even possible.
At the same time, with the users growth drastic reduction and sensitive quality difference between carriers service disappearing, much of conquering new users and maintaining old users strategies needed to include high end phones with shinning new capabilities.
This seemed to be a small change but looking closely you will see a tremendous transfer of power from carriers to vendors. Apple’s iPhone is the most important example. Verizon is losing market because they didn’t accept Steve Jobs rules for apple store and people just got crazy about iPhone and move over to AT&T.
A good part of apple store’s success on selling applications is based on the 70% revenue and the easiness of publishment that developers have never seen before. Even needing to learn an alien language (Objective C), developers and small companies that moved from JavaME to iPhone found the new world much more friendly and they will not go back.
Now let’s review Google. Even wanting to use Java, they decided to create Android and ignore JavaME. Is it mere coincidence? I don’t think so. They knew carriers weren’t give up on JavaME blockings and that would be easier starting a new thing.
After Nokia’s (mainly a hardware vendor) agreement with Microsoft (software vendor), I will not be surprised if Nokia new phones start to came without JavaME to focus on .Net.
If this become true, there will no big names defending JavaME and without pressure, carriers will have no reason to remove the old restrictions and to change old rules. In this new era of many unrestricted technologies and old unfriendly JavaME, it will not make any sense to develop for it anymore and without developers, JavaME will probably fade away and die in some years from now. JavaME is like the first gnu trying to cross a river full of alligators. It’s being eaten while other gnus manage to cross the river.
Hello everybody!
This is the first post in our Mobile Talk blog.
In this space, members of Konkix Team will post about mobile news and mobile industry.
Check again soon!
Best Regards.
Guilherme Carvalho