After my rather direct note earlier today I thought I should get a bit of balance going in the form of some good things about Vodafone 360.

The primary 360 interface is actually rather intuitive. There is perhaps nothing better than sweeping your finger to the left, watching the little profile squares swoosh about and taping on the picture of your wife.

That displays a nice little profile box giving you the opportunity to…

- call
- text
- send an email
- send a message (I haven’t worked out the difference yet, I think that’s a 360 message)
- or view their location

It’s nice. I do like it. I’ve moved my family into the ‘family’ section. I’ve moved some work colleagues into the ‘work’ section. Likewise with friends.

It’s — psst, don’t tell anyone I wrote this — quite enjoyable.

The biggest problem I’ve got at the moment is that none of my friends, family or work colleagues are using Vodafone 360. In fact, they’re not using Facebook much at all.

And that’s a bit of an arse. It’s not Vodafone’s fault.

I found myself grabbing the handset every 30 minutes or so and having a flick through to see just how flippin’ boring my contacts are.

Indeed there have been no updates from the folk on my phone since last night’s Dr Who extravaganza.

When they add Twitter to the 360 menu options, it’ll be more relevant to me I think.

I like the web interface too. You can login to www.vodafone360.com and configure your account there too (useful for mass-deleting people who you don’t need on your handset). I was particularly impressed that, by default (and automatically), any photos I take are uploaded there, privately. Kind of like an automatic ShoZU-on-steroids.

Once the photos are there, though, there doesn’t appear to be an easy option to, for example, knock them over to Flickr yet.

So far then, I think the Samsung H1 on Vodafone 360 is shaping up to be a rather useful device/service for normobs.

Normally my device of choice is a BlackBerry Bold — but I’ve shelved that away (well, I’m still carrying it, just the SIM is in the Samsung) and I’m living like a Vodafone 360 Consumer.

And I’m quite annoyed.

The device itself is what you’d expect from Samsung.  Big, gorgeous screen, reasonable user-interface (beyond the 360 stuff).

Getting your head around the Vodafone 360 UI is — for me, as a mobile geek — quite a challenge. By that I mean the square avatar interface.  The one that’s being advertised everywhere.

My expectations were completely wrong.

I’ve been operating on the assumption that 360 works with Google and it works with Facebook.  Right?

Well it does.

Sort of.

I just assumed that it worked the way everyone else expects it to — that is, to synchronise.  That’s what ‘360′ is all about, right?  Getting a 360 degree view on my actual social network?

The first degree, then, surely, has to be ripping a copy of my contacts out of my Google account, complete with their mobile numbers, right?  Yes I’m a power user, but this is the absolute minimum I expect from ‘adding my Google account’.

It doesn’t do that.

It does, however, set up an email account with the correct details.  And it also sets up an IM account correctly.  This, dear reader, is good news.  As long as you overlook the fact that the email account — by default, it seems — wants to download (sorry, ’synchronise’) the 17,000 emails in my account.  Arse.

So. Hold your breath for a moment, right.  Suspend your disbelief.  Let’s move on to Facebook.

Login with your details.  Done.  It really is a nice experience setting up the account on your phone. You have to wait a few minutes for your device to download all your contact photos and status updates.  And it is rather cool being able to see up to date profile pictures and status messages.  I quite enjoyed swishing them back and forward.

Mismatched assumptions though.  I thought the device would also take the phone numbers from my Facebook friends and populate them into the address book.

No.

This isn’t, as I speculated initially, a Vodafone 360 problem per se.  No.  It’s a user permissions error.

The only one of my 600 Facebook contacts who has given permission for her mobile number to appear public is my wife’s good friend, Joey.  So hi there Joey.  It’s just you and me.

The fact I can SEE the phone numbers of my friends on the web — ON their Facebook profile — doesn’t seem to matter.   The overwhelming majority are not synchronised so I can only assume it’s a user permissions thing at Facebook.  Everyone’s left the ‘don’t show my mobile number in public’ option on.  Apart from Joey.

So whilst it’s brilliant to click on a friend and see all the various ways of contacting them… the reality is, I can ‘Vodafone360-them’ (send an email from my Voda account) or I can ‘Facebook-message’ them.

No text.  No MMS.  No telephoning.  If I want that, I have to edit the contacts.

Which is precisely what I did before I left the house this morning.  I added my wife’s number — MANUALLY — into the phone.

This, I’d like to point out, is the first time I’ve added my wife’s number into my phone in flipping years.

It was a novel experience, I grant you that.   I hardly ever TYPE mobile numbers into address books anymore.  The prospect of going through 50 or 100 numbers is not appealing.

I’m kind-of enjoying the 360 experience, then.  It’s just these dropped balls that are annoying me.  And the rest of the 360 users too.  Just do a search for aghast normobs wondering how the hell they’re meant to add their address books.  (I mean their ACTUAL address books, not the social networking stuff).  Turns out if you plug your handset into your PC, you can install the Samsung PC Suite which should do some kind of desktop address book synchronisation.

If you’re on a Mac like me, you’re stupid.  No support today.  None that I could discern.

I have no intention whatsoever of synchronising my contacts via one of the VMWare Fusion PC installs I have.   It is not 1998 again and it is not, as the Vodafone eForum chap suggested on one forum I read, appropriate to suggest consumers ‘go and buy a Samsung PC synchronisation kit’.

I think it’s patently ridiculous that a billion dollar company such as Vodafone stuck this out into the market without duplicating the basic functionality of the other platforms.   iPhone syncs with Google.

BlackBerry syncs with Google.

Nokia syncs with Google.

ANDROID obviously syncs with Google.

I mean… do I have to carry on?

Yes.  Because it’s a trial.   I will use this device for a week.  Just don’t expect any email, calls, texts or anything else from me.  Ok, maybe a Facebook update…

There are nice aspects of 360 though.  I’ll get to them once the red mist of frustration has gone from my eyes.

I’ll be delivering it in newsletter format — so if you’d like to be included, sign-up here: http://www.theapplicationreview.com.

Any submissions? Drop me a note: apps@mobileindustryreview.com.

So shout-outs, links, suggestions: ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

But he’s being declined by their credit department. This is despite having a sensible credit record. He’s at a total loss.

He just doesn’t want to be with any other provider.

I don’t blame him. I really do enjoy my Vodafone service (particularly since they were quite content to allow me to go from spending 500 quid a month to 100 a month!).

It gets better, though, this strange situation.

He needs a guarantor.

A sodding guarantor.

Can you BELIEVE that?

Billion dollar Vodafone won’t give him a £16/month sim-only contract account without a guarantor. He’s not a criminal. He’s not been blacklisted, bankrupt — any of the usual issues.

He’s perfectly fine with the other networks. Just not Vodafone. There’s no history, nothing.

It’s just their credit system/policy.

So today he asked if I’d act as guarantor for him.

I agreed.

Now, because of this, I have to wait for somebody to call me tomorrow evening.

How ridiculous is this? The chap’s going to call me and take fifteen quid from me. To prove I’m real. Or something. And my friend is going to give me the cash.

I can’t quite believe we’re operating in the 21st Century.

What’s next? Debtor’s prison?

Will I need to hand over the deeds to my house to a trusted third party verified and approved by Vodafone before I can become guarantor, I wonder?

Based on £16/month for 18 months (£288), does that mean that I will need to prove that I have liquid assets to the value of £288,000 just in case my friend runs up a reaaaaally large fair-use-policy data bill?

Will I be required to make a deposit of half a million pounds sterling in my lawyer’s account so that we can process the transaction tomorrow evening?

This is getting absolutely fucking stupid, Vodafone.

I advised my friend to get an Orange account. He’s not that keen. He wants Vodafone. I see why but I think he’s off his head.

My suggestion is to stuff Vodafone. They clearly don’t need or want the business.

Absolutely ridiculous.

He asked if those nice ‘Vodafone eForum chaps’ that I keep on going on about will be able to help.

I doubt it.

The credit system at Vodafone is absolutely ruthless. I know myself after a disagreement with them years ago. It took me about a year before they’d let me back in the door.

This was, of course, when Vodafone UK was either the market leader or, between friends, within spitting distance of being the market leader.

After Orange’s recent acquisition of T-Mobile, Vodafone is in the exceedingly embarrassing position of being — read it and weep — THIRD largest in it’s home country. (Provided my memory is accurate, I’m sure it goes: T-Mobile/Orange, o2, Vodafone, 3UK).

And they’ll sit in that place as long as they continue with weird and wonderful credit policies.

The more I think about it, the more I reckon my friend should get a PAYG account and use it for unlimited data and swap to the market leader (Orange!).

Who’d have thought Orange would be the UK market leader, eh?

Orange are delighted to reveal, that as of 4pm today Orange had sold more than 30,000 iPhones across the UK – smashing what we believe is the previously published first day sales records for a handset in the UK

I can well believe this, especially when you count the number of people who signed-up in advance online.

Then Orange’s iPhone app success…

At the same time, Orange’s first ever exclusive UK app – Orange Wednesdays – has gone to the top slot in the Entertainment Category, and hit second place in the free apps chart on the Apple App Store. The app combines the latest film reviews and trailers with up to date info on what’s on, where films are showing, information on how to get there and the ability to redeem the 2-for-1 Orange Wednesdays cinema voucher on your Orange iPhone.

And finally, the (slightly contentious) point:

Orange’s 3G mobile network covers more people in the UK than any other, and is currently the focus of our recently launched £multi-million pound advertising campaign, which from today features the iPhone, entitled ‘You’re Covered’.

I’ve been seeing the ads everywhere. 3UK are understandably spitting blood claiming their network is bigger.

Who to believe?

Orange are delighted to reveal, that as of 4pm today Orange had sold more than 30,000 iPhones across the UK – smashing what we believe is the previously published first day sales records for a handset in the UK

Posted via email from MIR Live

Update: TechCrunch has published a rather interesting post on Apple ‘bathing’ in profits!

Update 2: A little more info from Orange.

A lot of normal people breathed a sign of relief.

Nay!

A sigh of excitement.

I’ve been speaking to a lot of normobs recently. I’ve been getting out on the mean streets of London and I’ve been canvassing opinion about the iPhone and the rest of the marketplace. (Granted, in the last two weeks I’ve not made it North of Watford so my experiences are highly focused around the South — and London in particular)

What’s fascinating is that there’s a significant pent-up demand for iPhones.

Talk to the analysts and most of them will tell you — flippantly (and highly inaccurately) — that ‘whoever wanted an iPhone has bought one already’. That is, my dear analyst friends, what we in the real world call, ATBP. (”A Total Bollocks Position“)

Changing networks is a total unmitigated nightmare. A TOTAL nightmare. Something that any sane individual wouldn’t attempt unless they were really, really, REALLY serious. Most normobs in the UK flirt with leaving their network. They flirt because that’s built straight into the model.

It’s so integrated that every network has their own flirting department. You and I know it as ‘retentions’. They’re the people behind the ‘press 5 if you’re thinking of leaving us’ option on your network’s customer services line. It’s them that you call in the heat of the moment — when you’ve seen red, for whatever reason, usually some mistake or misunderstanding — or a series of tiny mistakes that outrage you to the point of reaching for the matches as you pass the operator’s local shop.

The flirting chappies and ladies in the retentions department turn even the seasoned pro-normob into a gibbering bundle of happiness in a few minutes.

You phone up telling them you’re leaving ‘to get that iPhone’ and they’ve got the patter nailed to the ground, ready to floor you.

Would you like 500 extra minutes? A month? For… for free?

AND we can give you this really good phone that, you know Sir, it’s better than the iPhone. [Insert a description of some bollocks handset that will SORT OF keep you quiet for a while. It's going to have to keep you quiet because it comes with a 24-month contract.]

It’s even worse when you walk into your local Carphone Warehouse. You can see the pain on the face of the chap when you tell him you’re going to move networks and you DON’T have your transfer code. Because he has to sit there whilst you spend 45 minutes on the phone trying to tell the flirters at your mobile operator that you want to leave.

Of course, they ask what you’re leaving for — in terms of price plan.

So you tell them.

They then beat it.

And… the Carphone Warehouse chap, head in hands, just hopes you’ll hang in there.

But you’re sitting thinking that it would be a lot easier if you just said yes to your existing operator… and they did promise to send the bright shiny new handset next-day. And they said it was better! Better than the iPhone!

That, my dear analyst friends, is why there is still a TON of demand for the iPhone from Orange. And from Vodafone, T-Mobile and 3UK.

People can’t stand changing operators. They’ve tried it. It’s a mind-fluck. It’s not something your average normob wants to do. Ever.

Most normobs I’ve met who’ve been after an iPhone (but weren’t willing to swap to o2) simply put it out of their mind. They’d flirt with the concept now and again. But changing was just too difficult a prospect.

This morning a whole raft of £35/month contract customers — who’ve previously been sitting staring at their bollocks Nokia / Sony Ericsson / Samsung / Windows Mobile Piece of Shit — are now free to contemplate a treat.

Say what you like about the iPhone, it’s like a plasma or flat-panel TV.

Everybody loved them. Everybody wanted one. A few of your friends finally splashed the cash and got one. Then, before you know it, the prices came down to acceptable levels and woosh… you want one. And what’s more — shit — you can actually *afford* one.

And don’t think your average normob is going to give a toss about the unlimited data policy that Orange is offering. I’ve seen the hulabalooooo and it’s irrelevant to the average chap and girl on the street.

They don’t want to get screwed. And what’s more, they won’t. Orange simply cannot afford a full page wailer in the Daily Mail about some poor guy being billed £4k for watching the Top Gear series on his iPhone.

The average normob doesn’t give a toss about the price of the device. Neither did the 1 million o2 iPhone customers.

As long as it’s roughly 30-quid a month, it doesn’t matter.

It’s an iPhone.

It’s like a plasma TV. Tens of thousands of Orange customers will shortly be thinking they deserve a bit of tech luvin’ and they’ll splash out. Mark my words.

So happy iPhone day to all the Orange UK customers.

And if you’re a handset manufacturer operating in the United Kingdom making devices that retail around the £35-45/month contract mark, take out your projections spreadsheet and knock another few percentage points off your target audience, you won’t be getting them back any time soon.

Anyway, having raised almost $50m from some Silicon Valley greats, there was really no question that the next step for AdMob was — obviously — Google.

You can read Omar’s public letter here with the news and here’s Google’s reaction.

It’s no surprise whatsoever. Yahoo is limping along and, frankly, there’s not that many other organisations with the direct interest and the cash to spunk three quarters of a billion dollars on AdMob.

Throughout the marketplace there’s been a general recognition — for a while now — that Google has been arsing about with mobile. If you take a look at their existing mobile advertising offering, you’ll see how rubbish it is. Like a 4-year-old knocked it up using their 20% day off from the sand pit.

AdMob and Google = natural fit.

The deal was a forgone conclusion in my mind once they began to hit a billion impressions a month.

Kudos to Omar and the rest of the team at AdMob. It’s a super exit and I’m sure they’ll go on to even greater things at Google and beyond.

The crazy attitude to iPhone whilst understandable has morphed from enthusiasm to bubble.

I actually think we — the marketplace — is in pre-bubble mode. But I’ll deal with that in this week’s newsletter (sign-up for free, here).

To the bubble.

Why are we in a mobile industry bubble? Because everyone and their dog is developing and obsessing over mobile applications.

Certainly — or, as the Americans would say — for sure, there are people making good cash from their iPhone applications. Good cash. Pizza Hut’s $1m in 3-months represents a super example. There are plenty of independent developers who have joined the application-developer-elite with a million quid’s worth of revenue from the iTunes app store.

For every super-successful developer, there are — I guestimate — about 800 hopefuls.

And THIS is the danger sign.

Where there’s blind hope, there’s a ton of money to be made out of selling shovels. But not necessarily out of investing your own personal time and effort on a wing and a prayer.

When I sit down with a lot of developers, the hope is that their application will become The Next Big Thing.

Invariably this doesn’t happen. You have to work very, very hard for success — and indeed, it’s almost nigh on impossible to be successful in the application store without some kind of support (financial or otherwise).

There are occasional exceptions — a one-man-band developer who can create an application and, bish-bash-bosh, get it up into the app store and start making a comfortable 5k month in revenue… for a few months. Enough to buy a new mac. Enough to upgrade to premium economy once or twice.

That revenue tails off though, unless you’ve come up with a super-hot idea that *has legs*. And without big brand support, it’s very easy to be eclipsed by The Next Big Thing.

Consumers are happily forking out cash for their application experience as the marketplace continues to go through rapid evolution and as the platform owners (Apple, for example) continue to innovate different payment methods and so on.

There’s a highly unnatural investment curve at the moment though. The majority are obsessing over the 50m iPhone users — for reasons that we’ve gone over time and time again here on Mobile Industry Review. If you assume that each of those 50m iPhone/iPod Touch users has disposable income of $5 per month to spend on their platform (and we’re being kind in this assumption), that’s a monthly economy of $250 million or $3 billion a year.

Even though I’m using a possibly inaccurate monthly budget, you and I both know that right now, investors are being shown similar figures.

Entrepreneur: “Now, if you could just give us that $500,000, we confidently assert we can deliver 0.5% of this marketplace within 12 months.”

Investor: “Round figures?”

Entrepreneur: “We’ll make $15 million by Dec 2010″

Now you and I know that this is *conceivably* possible. Come up with a good application — a really good one — get the right marketing mix and boom, you could certainly do this.

It’s not out of the realms of possibility, is it? There are quite a few applications that have done a million downloads at $1 each, right? So 15m of them should be easy. Especially when Apple is predicted to flog another 5-10m devices over X months.

That’s the problem.

The issue is that it’s NOT inconceivable.

So investors are beginning to get stuck in.

And entrepreneurs are beginning to dust off their dotcom pitches. All it seems to take is a quick replace-all (replacing ‘web’ with ‘mobile’) and you’re done.

It’s fascinating to see the signs beginning to emerge, especially as investors who’ve kept their heads down during the recent crisis are beginning to look for rich pickings and better returns than the small percentage points offered by the market’s generally depressed banks.

There are certainly opportunities, significant and substantial opportunities for growth. But we’re in a bubble.

So invest carefully, invest wisely.. and if in doubt, hire the biggest mobile cynic (me) and my team here at Mobile Industry Review and we’ll see you right.

Meantime, game on everyone. Game on!

It turns out, the only thing that ever ended up killing the iPod was the iPhone. One cool, lustful Apple device over another.

But back in the glory days of the PMP, every competitor tried to out-feature and out-spec the iPod as the lack of features was the perceived weakness of the device.

“Hey! The iPod doesn’t have a removable battery or space for a SD card. There’s also no FM radio! Let’s get the boys in engineering on that–stat!”

When it was first released, people figured the Zune was probably over-billed as an iPod killer, but that it would a successful product in its own right. However, the reason why the Zune turned out nowhere near anything that even resembled an iPod killer is because it’s not about a feature-war. Rather than trying to beat the iPhone by going after its perceived weaknesses–a lack of features, they should have taken the disgusting, slimey, but effective advice of Karl Rove–”Don’t attack your enemy’s weaknesses, attack their strengths.” If you best your competitor’s strengths, all they are left with are the weaknesses.

The reason people loved the iPod (and now the iPhone) was the user experience, not the feature set.

Which brings us to the Droid. Now that the PMP is irrelevant, the Droid is going the Zune route against a different Apple product.

Every review I’ve read says that the two biggest pain points in the Droid are the unusable camera and the dreadful physical keyboard.  I have not had any significant time with the Droid myself, but I ran my thoughts by mobile hardware genius Noah Kravitz of PhoneDog.com who had extended time to play with his Droid review unit, and he agreed in this respect.

In the “Droid Does” campaign it’s a classic case of going after your enemy’s weakness. It seems that they tacked on a horrid physical keyboard  just so they could say that they have one. And the camera?

“Who cares about the actual quality of the camera, let’s make it five megapixels–two better than the iPhone 3GS!! Then let’s make a commercial about it!”

Everyone says that the Droid is the thinnest slider ever, but imagine how much thinner, more lightweight and sleeker a phone it could have been if it didn’t have a keyboard-in-name-only.

The media player also has been receiving poor marks in every review. This is one of the iPhone’s strengths and should have been one the things they were trying to attack. But this brings up a good point: who is “They?” Motorola? Google? Verizon?

This is the fundamental difference between Apple and  Android (and if we’re assuming Windows Mobile is still relevant, then them too). Apple controls the hardware and the OS it uses, and can tweak the hardware/software mix to (near) perfection. This is why it’s not fair to compare any other phone makers, save for RIM and Palm, to Apple.

This is why we have yet to see a phone that will “kill” the iPhone and why trying to create a killer is futile (unless you are Palm with the Pre or RIM with the *snicker* Storm). This still doesn’t mean that there can’t be great phones that don’t kill the iPhone. From all accounts, the Droid is a great phone–but it could have avoided its two biggest drawbacks if it hadn’t gone down the Zune path and stayed out of the attempted murder business.

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Funambol (previously covered by Ewan here) is kicking off the OMS show with some early news.

Later today, Funambol will announce its acquisition of Zapatec, a provider of AJAX Web 2.0 solutions (not a prescription heartburn medication as you might glean from first glance at their website).

The full info is in the release below. I’ll have to track the Funambol people down tomorrow so they can tell me more about this in plain English.

Funambol has no comment on acquisition price.

Funambol Acquires Zapatec to Usher in New Generation of Rich
Mobile Browser Native Apps That ‘Sync & Push’ Billions of Devices

Funambol open source mobile sync & push plus Zapatec AJAX web 2.0 framework uniquely provide all required ingredients for open mobile native apps to address device fragmentation

Redwood City, Calif., November 4, 2009 – Funambol, the leading provider of open source mobile cloud sync and push email for billions of phones, today announced it has acquired Zapatec, Inc., a leader of AJAX web 2.0 frameworks. The acquisition enables Funambol to uniquely address the industry pervasive device fragmentation challenge that plagues developers and requires building native apps for too many platforms. The combination of Funambol’s open source mobile sync and push server, with Zapatec’s AJAX web 2.0 technology, will foster a new generation of open, rich mobile browser native apps for billions of smart- and feature phones. This provides the best of both worlds — rich mobile web native apps that ’sync and push’ and that work on all devices.

“Future mobile apps will resemble PC AJAX apps, they will be web-based yet will sync data with mobile devices and have push notifications,”

said Fabrizio Capobianco, Funambol CEO. “We are very pleased to acquire Zapatec, the leading provider of AJAX web 2.0 frameworks. Together, our technology allows us to create the next generation of open, rich mobile browser native apps that sync and push billions of devices.”

There are four billion mobile phones today, growing to five billion over the next few years. These phones represent a major device fragmentation problem for the industry, as they are splintered across numerous platforms and manufacturers, including iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BREW, Java ME, mobile Linux and several proprietary offerings. Further, entire new classes of wireless devices are emerging, such as e-book readers, wireless digital cameras and printers, netbooks and appliances, with their own operating environments. This makes it extremely challenging for developers to build rich mobile apps that work across a wide range of devices.

Many industry experts believe that the next generation of mobile apps will be web-based, similar to AJAX web 2.0 apps for PC browsers that provide desktop-like capabilities and ease-of-use. Funambol recognizes that just providing rich mobile browser apps will be insufficient. Apps must also sync data and content locally with mobile devices and have push capabilities similar to push email. They must also be integrated into the core apps on devices such as their address book, calendar and messaging clients.

The integration of Funambol and Zapatec technology provides all of the required resources to build the next generation of open, rich mobile browser native apps. It combines Funambol’s open source mobile data sync and push server platform, with Zapatec’s AJAX web 2.0 framework. This will enable Funambol, its customers and open source community to create a new generation of open, rich mobile native apps that ’sync & push’ billions of devices to address the device fragmentation problem. As part of the acquisition, Dror Matalon, Zapatec CEO, is joining Funambol’s leadership team as Vice President, Emerging Technology.

“Open source is on fire in mobile, and Funambol is at the forefront,” said Dror Matalon. “Together, our technology can make it easy for people to build rich mobile native apps that support all major platforms.”

About Funambol

Funambol is the leading provider of mobile open source cloud sync and push email for billions of phones. Funambol open source software has been downloaded over three million times by 50,000 developers in 200 countries. The commercial version of Funambol has been deployed by the largest device manufacturers, mobile operators, portals, service providers and ISVs in the world, including AOL, 1&1, EarthLink and CA, Inc. Funambol is headquartered in Redwood City, California with an R&D center in Italy. For more information, please visit http://www.funambol.com. You can follow Funambol on Twitter at http://twitter.com/funambol.

Ahoy!

I’m heading out to the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco tomorrow.

Have a look at the agenda and tell me, dear MIR readers, whom should I make sure I talk to?

I’ll probably write up a post at the end of the day tomorrow, and I plan do be doing some real-time updates on my twitter stream.

So let me know in the comments, or shoot me an @reply on Twitter, who do you need to hear from?

I’ve got quite a lot of rants bottled up. And I mean a LOT. I have been walking past Vodafone shops this week and I’ve been feeling like imploding at the futility of their current mobile developer engagement strategy. This, despite the company having some supremely talented people on board.

Nokia and Symbian. We’re beyond laughable with Nokia — and in particular, Symbian. I understand and recognise the company isn’t anywhere near going out of business blah blah blah. The speed of

Motorola’s Droid is causing a stir in the States — so much so that 2,000 Verizon Stores are opening early on launch day. What does this say for Android and North America? The Droid does look like a pretty neat handset.

I’m also seeing a lot of developers beginning to talk about Android now — seriously. These are primarily iPhone developers with quite a bit of success under their belts, now closely examining the platform. What’s interesting is that when I mention BlackBerry to them, they typically recoil in shock. When I mention Sony Ericsson, their eyes glaze over — and when I mention Vodafone’s 280m customers, one chap openly laughed at me. I did qualify that, yes, right now, VF360 isn’t a big platform.

Pizza Hut has done a million dollars in revenue through it’s iPhone app. Shocking. I bet that’s a pretty good return on the cost of development. What does this mean for online / takeaway services like them? Very interesting.

Those are the things I’m playing around with. If you’ve got any suggestions, mail me, ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

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I’m pretty impressed with the UrbanKite concept. Have a read and see what you think:

- – - – -

1. Who are you and what’s your background?
UrbanKite has four co-founders.
Neil Pepper, for last seven years I have been Mobile Client Architect for a well known photo upload service, architected and ran the team responsible for the Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone clients.
Frank Sykes, lead the first online job matching system 12 years ago and ever since has been applying technology in inventive and approachable ways, working with large organisations such as PwC and smaller Entertainment companies.
The 2 remaining founders wish to remain anonymous for now, but work for 2 competing leading search companies.

2. What is UrbanKite?
UrbanKite is a free LBS currently for iPhone and Android devices that allow people to quickly find places around them based on tips of local experts. They can then add their own tips for those places and others, becoming experts of their local area. UrbanKite has been developed with other social networks in mind, allowing users to post tips to their Twitter account or Facebook so their network can pick up on their tips. Not only is this suited for mobile but all the tips and user profiles are available on UrbanKite website making it easy for none mobile users to look up businesses friends have recommended.
UrbanKite also makes great use of built in features of the iPhone and Android devices to help the users find the places including annotated maps, routing and soon augmented reality

3. Do we really need another reviews system?
UrbanKite does not aim to be another reviews system but rather a way to quickly share and get tips about physical places. Of course it can be about restaurants and bars, which is one area where timely local knowledge can make the difference between a good night and a disaster with your date, but it can also be about anything else (for instance while waiting for your plane at Gatwick you can leave a tip in 30 seconds from your mobile to let other travelers know that the train shuttle between South and North terminal is out of commission and that they need to budget additional time to take the replacement bus…). The fact that we leverage Facebook and Twitter means also that we make it easy for you to share these tips beyond the realm of UrbanKite with your entire network.

4. Where did you get the UrbanKite name from?
The idea of the name UrbanKite is that each user is a specialist of an area so they can “fly their Kite to make others know about businesses they like!”. But to create UrbanKite’s name we took best bits from other apps that best describe what it does … see if you can figure out which ones.

5. Tell us why we should all rush out and start using UrbanKite?
UrbanKite can be useful to you now wherever you are as soon as you install it. No need for a big community to be useful. At the minimum it will tell you all the various businesses / places of interest around you. Once people in the neighborhood you happen to be in start using it, you can see which of these businesses / places have their favour (think Digg for physical places) as well as easy access to the conversations / tips about these places. What’s the killer dish on the menu at this restaurant? When is the happening night at this club? Which hairdresser to avoid at this salon? etc…

Of course we make it super easy for you to share your tips / comments as well: No sign up process. No forcing user to enter credentials or create an account. No waiting until the app is launched in your area (we leverage the extensive Google local API which gives us unprecedented coverage virtually anywhere in the world). And if you want to start writing tips yourself you can leverage your existing Twitter or Facebook credentials to do so and share them with your existing network. We then automatically add a link to this business in your tweet / newsfeed item so non UrbanKite users know instantly what you are talking about.

6. I notice you’ve adopted both iPhone and Android platforms. What’s stopping you from developing a Nokia or Blackberry application? The simple answer is nothing, we chose iPhone and Android platforms initially because they have easiest route to market through their stores, have a limited number of handsets to test on, have a rapid development process and a proven track record of rich touchscreen LBS service apps. When UrbanKite has proved itself successful on these devices we will port to other platforms that have devices with build in GPS.

7. What was the best thing about developing on iPhone & Android?
Cheap in terms of time to develop feature rich applications and cost to create and distribute. Also with a small subset of devices on each platform, testing was kept to a minimum, with other platforms a wide range of screen size/orientation/ability/power etc make testing a huge issue.

8. What was the worst thing about developing on iPhone & Android?

For me when developing the iPhone version using Xcode on the Mac, coming from a PC background using Windows Xcode has a lot to live up to, although the slick integration of the IDE, emulator and on device debugging does make up for poor editing and window management on a mac.

9. When did you go live with the app and what kind of feedback have you received? What’s got more traction for you? Android or iPhone?
Android version launched in late summer and iPhone launched beginning of October. Initial response has been brilliant, similar downloads on each at the moment as Android had a head start but iPhone will be taking over shortly as we are currently being featured in UK iTunes “New and Noteworthy” section. As you can see from a search on Twitter http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23ukite tips are starting to come in thick and fast.

10. Why have you restricted the app to just London?
Unlike other related LBS applications UrbanKite is NOT restricted to any specific locations, users don’t have to wait until we launch in their area. Users can use UrbanKite anywhere in the world from New York City to a small village in Kent. This is because we leverage the extensive Google local API.

11. Who are you looking to do business/partner with?
At this point, we are mostly interested in talking to people who can help us distribute the application to a significant audience. There are many different actors in the eco-system that would fit this requirement, from carriers to large local players like the various local Yellow pages in each country. A partnership with providers of local event listings and local coupons could also reinforce the benefits we could offer to our users. We are also interested in partnering with specific interest sites with strong / passionate communities (for instance, think of mums sharing tips on anything baby related in their neighborhood via their iPhone/android phones while they watch their kids in the playground for instance…).

12. Are you considering in-app advertising?

We are currently working on the best way to provide our users with “useful” location based ads to fund the service. These are unlikely to be traditional ads you currently see in many free applications in the AppStores and will be voucher based. When we start signing up local businesses up we might look at offering the ability to insert paid sponsored tips for instance (clearly differentiated from regular tips of course).

13. What are you using to track app usage statistics?
http://www.AppFigures.com for tracking downloads via iTunes connect
http://www.Flurry.com for tracking usage, user distribution stats etc.

14. What’s been your experience marketing the application? Any tips?
Posting to app blogs gave us good results for Android. Because of the nature of the app people find out about UrbanKite thanks to posts they see on twitter that link to the business page, which has a growing viral effect. We are planning an event/game to bring local people together, which should fuel more local interest which will in turn fuel the viral effect.

15. How are you financed — are you looking for investment?
We have been bootstrapping for now, which has been sufficient to get the beta prototype out and to validate that we are fulfilling a need in the market and have an interesting product. If we continue to see the same traction as in the past couple of months however, we will probably look for seed funding to take the application to the next level and increase marketing / PR activities.

16. What are your top five mobile applications? Give us a line about why each one rocks your world.
- Universe iPhone – Can never remember which stars/constellations are which ? Universe can tell you, on 3GS with compass its even better
- iBomber – iPhone – Great plan view shooter using motion of iPhone, bomb the hell out of ships, gun placements and other planes.
- Echofon – iPhone – Favourite Twitter client for iPhone, keeps me up to date to Twitter
- YBrowser – S60 – Invaluable file browser for S60, if you develop for S60 you need this app.

17. Which UK mobile operator do you really rate?
Let me put it this way you could hear a small cheer over London when Orange/Vodafone announced they will be supplying the iPhone.

18. What was your first handset? What’s your current primary handset?
Neil : Nokia 6150 was my first handset, moved on the so called Matrix phone Nokia 7110. I usually carry a couple of phones around, at the moment I have a Nokia N97 and iPhone 3GS
Frank : My first phone was a 6110! Now have a iPhone 3GS

19. And the best gadget purchase you’ve made this year?
Neil : Just bought a MiniDVR 2 DogCam, for recording Snowboarding action this season
Frank : The new Nespresso machine called Citiz

20. Name three mobile-related companies or individuals that you reckon we should interview in the next edition?
* Daniel Eck – founder of Spotify, because their mobile app is poised to change the way we buy / listen to music – http://twitter.com/eldsjal
* Kei Shimada – because he has some great insights from mobile in Japan – http://twitter.com/kei_shimada
* JJ Rueb – CEO / founder of eBuddy because the mobile growth of their multi-client IM app has been nothing short of phenomenal – http://twitter.com/jjrueb

21. What else should we know?
UrbanKite is still in the early stages, we are continually improving the service, more content is going onto the website all the time and we have a new iPhone version out very soon with the Facebook Connect integration and an augmented reality mode for 3GS devices, we also have many many ideas how to take the service forward and create something really unique, some of these will be directed by feedback from our users. This is only the beginning – stay tuned!

- – - – -

Neil & Frank, thank you both for taking the time. You can get hold of UrbanKite via: http://www.urbankite.com. I strongly recommend downloading the app right-away!

The handset is gorgeous. Big. It’s very big. But that’s because you get a sumptuous touchscreen to play with. The handset reminds me a lot of Samsung’s recent i8910 (S60) model. I have been thoroughly enjoying the bright pixels and the surprisingly responsive haptic-feedback user interface.

In the main, setup was seamless. That said, I ran into one or two screens where I didn’t understand what I was meant to do. I filmed this a la the N900 videos I did recently. (You’ll see me hesitating and getting the odd thing wrong). During setup and use, I found myself gravitating between two perspectives: –

1. Complete and utter shock that a mobile operator had got so much ‘right’

2. Dismay at the occasional element that only a mobile operator committee could settle on

You’ll see in my videos that I wasn’t entirely comfortable during setup — one of the most important experiences for the user. This is not because I was playing dumb, but because I wanted to get it ‘right’. For instance after I’d created my 360 account, I had the option to .. Well… It was an entirely blank screen with what looked like a ‘plus/add’ option — but there was also an arrow top right which I interpreted as ‘advance to next step’. If it was me, I’d just choose one, knowing in the back of my mind that Voda would want me to add some services — Facebook, for example. If it was a 23-year old girl operating the handset she’d have been entirely stumped and have to guess. All of a sudden her reationship with her device has changed to one where she’s the confused user. Really bad in the iPhone world.

Once I’d added Facebook, I advanced to the next screen. It was blank too. In fact you can hear me on camera umming and ahhing wondering if anything was happening. There was no feedback to say the device was busy polling Facebook to get some initial users to display.

I added my Google account too. Adding accounts is simple enough. It’s my expectations that need to change.

I assumed that by adding Facebook and Google, I’d get all my contacts synched — as a big Google Apps user, I’m accustomed to my devices pulling down my contacts (and email). And for that matter, my calendar too. That didn’t happen. What did arrive down on my device were my Google Talk contacts — good enough for instant messaging. And strangely, my Facebook contacts didn’t come with their phone numbers. So whilst I can see my wife’s photo and status, I can’t call her from the device as I can’t remember her number.

This could well be entirely inaccurate — it’s my first sweep with the device. I’ve had to go back to BlackBerry for this morning (lots of things going on) but I will be swapping back to the H1 to experience more, soon.

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It’s going to be interesting to see what this device is like…

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Just got it moments ago…

Posted via email from MIR Live

I’m going to give one away each week in the Friday newsletter. (If you’re not on the list, add yourself here).

I haven’t come up with an actual competition yet. I’m going to think about that. Do you have any suggestions?

If you’ve got some gadgets that the MIR audience should know about — and salivate over — drop me a note and let’s give some away as prizes.

Prior to acquiring bucketloads of fun-size mars bars for the screaming hordes of children in Chiswick on Saturday (Halloween), I popped into the Chiswick High Road Vodafone shop for an introduction to Vodafone 360.

And it was a highly unsatisfactory experience. Yet somewhat informative about how Big Red is viewing the noted release of the new platform, especially from a developer perspective. It’s always fascinating to see how the end-consumer experience compares to the usually slick corporate presentation.

I shall regale you with the experience later on. Possibly in the newsletter this Friday — as it’s a biggie.

It’s my current position that developing for Vodafone is a career limiting move. So limiting in fact, that you’d be better with Nokia and Symbian at the moment. And that is saying something.

Anyway, more later.

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You know something has well and truly hit mainstream when there’s a magazine launched about it — and that magazine is sold in Sainsbury’s.

There were quite a lot of copies left on the shelves. I think it’s new though…

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And I’ve been mystified.

Completely mystified.

But I worked it out — eventually.

I have, in some posts, been linking to /newsletter/ — the correct path when you’re online. But if you’re reading via RSS or the RSS-to-email system, that won’t work. Durrrr.

Sorry.

I will make sure I publish the full URL in future.

Here it is:

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/newsletter/

Go ahead and sign-up there. It’s free, of course — and you can unsubscribe at any point with the link I’ll be including at the bottom of every edition.

And if you think your friends and colleagues could benefit, do pass the message on. Or sign them up with their express permission.

Finally if you’ve got any news or news snippets you’d like included in tomorrow’s edition, drop me a note: ewan@mobileindustryreview.com