Jason Delport's Mobile Observations

A Tale of One Phone

2009-06-29T11:07:22Z

I had a quick post-3GS look at the Flickr Camera stats and the results are telling. The iPhone beats every other device hands down. Even YouTube has taken notice of the iPhone since it got video recording. I get real tired of all the Nokia apologists saying that the iPhone is just a hyped fashion phone and that developers should actually target Nokia devices in order to reach the greatest number of users. I will willingly oblige when I see the metrics that support this view but until then our focus is on the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

29th June

13th May

Latest Devices - 08 June 2009

2009-06-08T14:26:20Z

A bumper addition. This is probably the most new devices (42) to hit our provisioning platform in a 7 day period since we launched in Summer 2007. The Palm Pre makes a welcome appearance and once again Samsung devices make up over 20% of the total. I'm constantly amazed at how many devices Samsung produce each with their own hardware and software configuration. Their production processes must be incredibly efficient and agile to support that much differentiation. They clearly deserve their 2nd place position behind Nokia.

Google I/O Mobile Session Videos

2009-06-05T09:52:38Z

Google have put all the I/O Session videos online. I learnt a huge amount about Android from last years videos so this year should be equally interesting.

Turbo-charge your UI: How to Make your Android UI Fast and Efficient

Pixel Perfect Code: How to Marry Interaction and Visual Design the Android Way

Supporting Multiple Devices with One Binary

Android Lightning Talks

Debugging Arts of the Ninja Masters

Coding for Life -- Battery Life, That Is

Writing Real-Time Games for Android

Looking Beyond the Screen: Text-To-Speech and Eyes-Free Interaction on Android

Mastering the Android Media Framework

How Do I Code Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

A General-purpose Caching Architecture for Offline-capable Web Applications with HTML 5 Databases or Gears

Update: Fixed links.

Paxmodept Turns Three

2009-06-01T14:16:49Z

Today's a big day for us: it's the first day in our new office; Chirag, who's been working for us part time for the last 6 months, joins us full time and will be working along side Steve and myself on a daily basis; and we turn 3 years old.

In the last year we've been very fortunate to have worked on some really interesting projects. Building mobile applications is still our core service and in the last year we have added both the Android and iPhone platforms to our existing repertoire of Java ME and BlackBerry. We've also built a handful of mobile web sites for some big brands, a bespoke SMS messaging solution for mobile application provisioning and the core transaction engine for an NFC mobile payment system. Not bad for a small company. :-)

Our thanks to all our clients, colleagues and friends without whose support these last three years wouldn't have been possible.

Latest Devices - 21 May 2009

2009-05-21T09:44:15Z

New devices to hit our provisioning platform in the last 7 days. Notables are the Samsung Android device, the BlackBerry 9630 aka Niagara and the first sightings on a Nokia S40 6th edition running the WebKit browser.

More Fun with Android Widgets

2009-05-19T09:18:33Z

I'm really getting into this Android widget thing. I now have 5 in total.

More information can be found at this blog post by Jeff Sharkey (winner of the Android Developer Challenge and now Google employee) and by browsing the source code of the default Calendar widget.

Flickr Camera Stats

2009-05-13T16:46:35Z

The Flickr Camera Finder section is always a good place to see what camera phones are popular. I'm always amazed at how much more popular the iPhone is than the Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. One of the very few things I miss about my Nokia N95 is the camera but a good camera does not necessarily imply regular usage it seems. I would love to know what makes iPhone users such prolific image uploaders. Camera software, user experience, data packages, demographics, image quality etc. I was also surprised to see the BlackBerry Storm feature so prominently.

Android Weather Widget

2009-05-11T17:06:07Z

I was playing around with the Android Widget API over the weekend and so far I am quite impressed. It's easy to use and very powerful. I already have tons of ideas for things I would like to build. There's a relatively easy tutorial on the Android Developers blog but I preferred learning by browsing the source code of their 'Word of the Day' demo.

As an example I built a simple widget addition to my weather application which shows the current London temperate in Celsius on my home screen.

I do have some concerns though. When waking the phone up from a long period of inactivity and then changing the screen orientation a few times the Home screen hung on me and I had to reboot to resolve the issue. This may be bad 3rd party code but it's definitely a problem.

Also, be sure to check out Enrique's blog post about Android widgets; the video is great.

Another Android Application

2009-05-07T12:59:52Z

There are plenty of weather applications in the Android market but they all fall short of my own personal requirements. I wanted a simple and pretty application with the temperature in Celsius so I built my own using the iPhone's weather application as a style guide and Google's weather API for data. Here are the results.

Android Market

2009-05-04T18:21:16Z

I've got high hopes for the *on device* application store phenomenon. Apple's App Store and to a lesser extent Android's Market and RIM's BlackBerry App World have been revelations for us application developers. Finally we have a viable route to the mass market consumer that doesn't involve selling our soul to the network operators. These new distribution channels aren't without challenges though. Apple's certification process has garnered some bad press recently and Android's Market has had poor sales figures. Nokia's forthcoming Ovi Store looks interesting and if it gets traction it will be a formidable distribution channel but it's costs are currently prohibitive.

The subject of this blog post is the Android Market as I have been particularly involved with Android development recently. While free applications have performed very well the paid applications have performed badly. The top selling paid application in the UK is 'Power Manager Full' ($0.99) and has been downloaded between 10,000 and 50,000 times. The best selling game is 'Baseball Superstars 2009' ($5.95) and this has been downloaded less than 5000 times.

Problems with the Android Market:

Market users don't have Google Checkout accounts and are reluctant to sign up.
Unfortunately there are already plenty of places to find illegal copies of paid Android applications online.
The store is over cluttered with useless applications.
The store has a very plain design and a poor user experience in general.
Paid apps were launched later than free apps and a tone was set in the market that apps were, and should be, free.
Lack of storage space on the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1). Only 70 MB of internal storage has been set aside for 3rd party applications and active users can fill this space very quickly (reference).
The Market is on device only which is limiting in regards to screen size and the amount of information available to the user.
The 24 hour refund period is too long.
Google earn nothing from application sales (reference) and therefore making the Market commercially successful *might* not be their highest priority.

Some possible solutions:

Proper DRM on paid applications.
Market redesign (better UX and navigation):
- Quality applications (both free and paid) get more prominently featured.
- More ways to browse the application catalogue (most popular & best rated by day, week, month, all time)
- Provide application screen shots
- Improve the overall design (those boring black lists got tired very quickly)
Google offer Market users an incentive to sign up to Google Checkout and buy applications.
Google offer incentives to regular application buyers.
Future Android device have more space for applications or allow applications to be saved to the SD card.
Google builds a website that allows Android users to browse, buy and install applications from their computers.
Reduce the refund period.

Any thoughts on this issue?

Updated with more ideas on 07 May and again on 14 May

Nokia Ovi Store

2009-05-03T23:05:25Z

Nokia Ovi Store is opening soon so I've been following all the analysis. It's looks like it's going to be prohibitive for small developers to get their Java ME applications into the store. Here are some calculations I have been doing to find the break even point.

Upfront Costs (these need to be investigated further)

Get application Java Verified: $350
Join Ovi Store: $200/annum
Deploy application to store: $20

Ongoing Costs (based on selling 500 applications @ $2/app)

Let's assume 300 apps are paid for via network operator billing.
65% of $600 = $390 (tax, costs and network operator fees)
30% of $210 = $63 (Nokia's fees)
Developer gets $147 of the $600.

200 apps bought via credit card.
15% of $400 = $60 (tax + costs)
30% of $340 = $102 (Nokia's fees)
Developer gets $238 of the $400.

Total for developer after 500 apps sold

$1000 (gross) - $570 (upfront) - $615 (ongoing) = -$185 (net)

What this means is that to cover the costs of publishing a $2 application you need to sell well over 500 copies. And that's not even taking the development costs into account! If all your application purchases get paid for via the network operator billing mechanism then the developer gets virtually nothing. Another issue is that it seems Nokia will only pay you once you have 500 Euro in credit in your account.

Update: fixed my calculations.

Latest Devices - 22 April 2009

2009-04-22T16:29:26Z

Busy 7 days, 30 new devices hit our mobile provisioning platform.