Posts Tagged ‘MobileBeat’
Fuseproject founder to designers: To beat Apple, don’t be Apple
Apple’s design focus is about as sharp as it comes, with pretty much every aspect of the company dominated by how the final product will feel in a customer’s hand. That’s the secret to Apple’s success — and that’s the strategy competing businesses have to avoid, said founder and industrial designer .
Businesses looking to compete with Apple — though I can’t imagine who would want to take on that giant without a few billion dollars in revenue yearly behind them — need to have an incredible design focus with their own specific flair, he said.
“The reason Apple is so successful is because they found a way to fundamentally apply design principles in a way that is uniquely Apple and is very compelling in every way,” Béhar said. “The wrong attitude is to say Apple did it that way, we’re going to do it that way — you need to keep that as a top layer, a level of importance, and find design principles that are uniquely yours.”
That said, Béhar said Apple is a “shining example” of how design should be executed in a company. He said the design principles and strategies that Apple applies to its products are directly responsible for its success — especially its focus on designing products that aren’t dominated by customer feedback.
Apple’s incredible focus on design came out in a slightly sour way with the launch of its most recent iPhone. The iPhone 4 sported an external antenna band that interfered with the phone’s reception, prompting to make his “we’re not perfect” statement and hand out free cases to cover the design flaw.
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Placepop brings mobile loyalty program to Android users
, which allows any company to create and maintain virtual loyalty cards, today announced its free application is now available for Android devices.
The company was founded by former Friendster CEO Kent Linstrom and offers businesses a replacement to the traditional loyalty cards found in many of our wallets and purses. Consumers can check-in through the application, earn points and earn free stuff or special privileges for being a virtual card holder. The more points a user earns the higher their level, starting at bronze, then on to silver, gold and platinum. Businesses can customize their card and loyalty program on the app.
A whole host of loyalty program applications exist, and each offers consumers the ability to earn points or rewards for checking into a location. Major players like Foursquare and Gowalla are starting to add loyalty rewards to their services as well, giving brands the means to offer specials or promotions to those who check-in to a particular venue.
Foursquare continues its quest to dominate the check-in space with today’s release of version 2.0 for Android (, giving users the ability to create to-dos and get tips from friends. The company is also .
Silicon Valley-based PlacePop from Affinity Labs founder Chris Michel, Bebo Founder Michael Birch, James Currier and Stan Chudnovsky, according to .
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Mogotix delivers another blow to paper tickets (video)
San Francisco startup recently . It’s hardly the first company to offer mobile ticketing, but it’s the first one I’ve seen that uses phones as both the ticket and the ticket reader.
I met up with chief executive Scott Thorpe at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference to get a demonstration of the service, which you can see in the video below. (Because I’m not that bright, I didn’t realize that recording the video in my iPhone’s vertical mode meant it would be shrunk down in YouTube — but I think you can still see the app in action.) The idea is that you receive the ticket on your phone in the form of , which can then be scanned by the event organizers using a Mogotix app.
And when your ticket is scanned, Mogotix also adds your name to a list of attendees, which can be projected onto a screen for everyone to see. That may just sound like a cool extra feature, but Thorpe said it has been embraced at the tech industry events that tested the service. And Thorpe hopes to add more services around real-time attendee data.
Mogotix has raised $115,000 from .
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Nokia focusing on software, not just hardware, to win back U.S. customers
Mobile phone manufacturer is shifting its focus to further developing its operating system in an effort to win back U.S. customers and better compete with iPhone and Android smartphones, according to a company executive.
Nokia had traditionally focused on hardware development, particularly in the “dumbphone” market that has given the company a commanding market share of mobile phone sales for the past several years, said , executive vice president for services with Nokia’s mobile solutions division.
With the advent of the smartphone — particularly Apple’s iPhone — the game has essentially changed and Nokia has to shift its focus to providing better development tools for its Symbian operating system. Ojanperä made the comments at the GigaOm Mobilize conference in San Francisco today.
“We are seeing a transformation of Nokia into software and services to respond to consumer needs,” Ojanperä said. “That is something we have been focused on in the last two years, and that’s something Nokia might not have been focused on before that.”
Nokia is providing third-party developers with a suite of new tools such as development kits and analytics to help them develop better apps for Nokia’s Ovi distribution platform. To date, more than 70 Ovi developers have earned more than $1 million off their apps, with a handful of those making more than $10 million, Ojanperä said. Nokia is also working with 91 operators to help find developers and promote more third-party app development on Nokia’s Ovi app distribution platform — including a $10 million competition for app development through AT&T.
While Nokia’s Symbian operating system still holds a commanding market share, a indicates that the Google Android operating system will catch up to it by 2014, when about 30 percent of all phones will use the Symbian operating system.
To prepare for the inevitable onslaught, Nokia has shaken things up a bit in the past couple of months. Nokia earlier this month and is also working to develop hardware more suited to a smartphone version of Symbian — namely its , which is shipping in the next couple of days (though Ojanperä gave GigaOm founder and Mobilize host Om Malik one of the first as a late birthday present on stage).
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Japanese augmented reality gaming company Tonchidot lands $12M
, a mobile augmented reality (AR) platform provider, just landed $12 million in second round funding. Several Japanese companies and venture capitalists participated in the round, including mobile operator KDDI Corporation, media conglomerate Recruit Co. Ltd., and mobile advertising company SPiRE.
Augmented reality refers to the use of computer-generated imagery over a live feed of a real-world environment — something usually achieved with a cellphone camera.
According to Osuke Honda from VC fund DCM, a previous investor, the investment will be used to build a larger, more diverse team and reach out to an international audience — as well as extending the company’s SoLAR gaming platform.
Social gaming is already a multi-billion dollar market in Japan. Leading mobile games portal DeNA, for example,$576 million in revenue in the six month period from April through September of this year and is on track to generate over a billion dollars this year. Japan’s other social gaming giant Gree already has 20 million users and an extremely high ARPU. Zynga recently in Japan with SoftBank.
In July this year Tonchidot launched a social, AR gaming platform for developers called SoLAR which combines location, augmented reality and social play features. Tools to integrate Twitter, Facebook, and payment features for iPhone and Android will be provided in the upcoming October product release.
Tonchidot’s flagship product, an AR app called Sekai Camera, has been downloaded 1 million times and is installed on an estimated 30 percent of all iPhones in Japan. Sekai Camera is available for iPhone in 90 countries and for Android in more than 20 countries. A lightweight version for feature phones just launched.
Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. The conference takes place on October 18th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Sponsors can contact us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To purchase tickets, .
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DiscoveryBeat 2010 speakers: More top thinkers to delve into art of discovery
We’re pleased to announce some more big thinkers slated to speak at , the conference addressing the evolving problem of discovery in an era full of app stores and content. Our newest speakers represent vital parts of the ecosystem for getting content noticed.
DiscoveryBeat 2010 is an event focused on the “secret recipe” for application discovery and monetization. Due to its success in 2009, the conference has expanded to a full day event and will be held on October 18th at in San Francisco. .
For publishers or app developers, the promise of the mobile and social revolution is compelling. However, new players like Google’s Android are throwing out the early rules and creating new challenges in the ecosystem. How do you get discovered when there are 250,000 other publishers and applications fighting for users across diverse devices and interfaces, such as the PC, social networks, mobile phones, and tablets?
Here are our latest speakers:
Dave Castelnuovo is a veteran flash developer, entrepreneur and consultant and is half the team behind the iPhone sensation. With just a three-person company behind it, Pocket God has sold more than 3 million units on the iPhone. Castelnuovo founded Bolt Creative in 2001 as a flash development company and game studio, and helped to lead the indie charge onto the iPhone in 2008 and 2009. Castelnuovo has worked with a variety of internet technology companies throughout his career as well as leading game publishers such as Electronic Arts.
Julian Farrior is an alumnus from last year’s inaugural DiscoveryBeat event, where he set himself apart from the crowd in getting its iPhone games to the top of the Apple App Store. In a case study of discovery, we are going to try to get Farrior to spill all the beans again for the benefit of the audience. Farrior is founder and CEO of Backflip Studios, a mobile game company focused on bringing innovative and thoughtful titles to an expanding group of casual gamers on the iPhone. Backflip has had 10 top-five overall apps and seen more than 50 million downloads in its first 18 months of operation. Its games include popular titles such as Paper Toss, Ragdoll Blaster, Strike Knight and NinJump. Prior to Backflip, Farrior was an angel investor and vice president of business development and operations at Earthscape, a company that also had early success in the app store. Previously, he spent seven years at Yahoo in various management roles, the most recent of which included heading up emerging markets search. He is a lifelong video and board gamer who hopes to see Ultima III soon delivered to the iPad.
Ben Keighran is CEO & co-founder of , a mobile app discovery service. He launched Chomp with co-founder Cathy Edwards in January 2010. The and funding since its launch. Keighran is also currently serving as an advisor to Clixtr and was previously the lead advisor for mobile products at social search company Aardvark up until it was acquired by Google in early 2010. In 2006, Keighran launched Bluepulse, a mobile social messaging application. Bluepulse was one of the most downloaded mobile java applications ever, reaching almost 2mm downloads per month at its peak. At Bluepulse, Keighran raised $6.5 million to build the company, and after growing the business to a point where users were exchanging 300 million messages per month, he was nominated by BusinessWeek as one of America’s Top Entrepreneurs under the age of 25.
Peter Farago is vice president of marketing at Flurry. He is responsible for corporate and product marketing at Flurry, a leader in iPhone and Android application analytics, promotion and monetization solutions . Prior to Flurry, Peter led product marketing at mobile game maker Digital Chocolate, helping build the company into a top-10 publisher world-wide. He joined Digital Chocolate from Electronic Arts, where he managed The Sims franchise, the #1 PC game of all time. Peter began his career in consumer packaged goods at Pacific Sun, where he was head of marketing and sales. Farago will run a breakout session on “Turning virtual currency into the real thing.” He also spoke at last year’s DiscoveryBeat.
Vijay Chattha is founder and Chief Talker of VSC Consulting & AppLaunchPR. Vijay has led strategy and public relations efforts for over 35 mobile and gaming companies, resulting in over $1B in exits and transactions. The company has earned 40 PR awards for its creative and results-driven publicity campaigns. VSC’s AppLaunchPR clients have experienced over 350 million downloads on and off deck since 2002. Chattha is also an alumnus of our first event.
Alan Warms is founder and CEO of Appolicious.com and AndroidApps.com, which constitutes the first true cross-platform discovery service for mobile applications. The service combines social networking, original journalism (as part of a co-branding partnership with Yahoo) and search technology to help consumers discover the best of the hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPad and Android apps that are available today. A serial entrepreneur, Warms previously founded and ran Participate.com (sold in 2004 to OutStart) and Buzz Tracker. After selling Buzz Tracker to Yahoo in 2007, Warms served as vice president and general manager of Yahoo News, Technology and Education.
Our previously announced speakers include Brian Reynolds, chief game designer at Zynga; Norman Winarsky, head of SRI ventures; Tim O’Brien, vice president of business development for Disney Mobile; Arjun Sethi, chief executive of LOLapps. Sebastien DeHalleux, co-founder of Playfish and vice president of business development & strategic partnerships of EA Interactive; Si Shen, chief executive of Papaya Mobile; Marc Gumpinger, chief executive of Scoreloop; and Peter Relan, chairman of YouWeb.
Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. We’ll cover the topic at . Startups and big companies alike should consider entering our . VentureBeat would like to thank the industry leaders thank those supporting DiscoveryBeat 2010, including Flurry, Adobe, Offermobi, Appolicious, Appbakr, AppLaunchPR & Herakles Data Center. Unique sponsorships are still available. For more information contact sponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, .
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Internet phone company Jajah aims to revamp the crooked calling card industry
, the internet phone company that for $207 million, is declaring war on calling cards. The company is announcing today a calling card of its own that it’s dubbing “the world’s first honest calling card.”
The trouble with traditional calling cards is that you never get what you pay for. Most cards come with a variety of hidden fees and surcharges, and it’s never clear exactly how much you’re paying for a given call — no matter what the card itself says. The people most affected by these crooked cards are low-income workers who immigrate to the US and need a cheap way to call their families internationally.
Jajah’s solution is a calling card driven by its internet telephony service. The company is aiming to be completely transparent about all of the costs to customers. After buying a card, you can look up your exact balance online, or via a phone call or text message. There are no hidden fees, and since it’s using Jajah’s VoIP technology, the per-minute cost of calls are kept low.
It’s also taking the calling card to the next level by offering an iPhone application. The app will function much like a traditional calling card. You’ll be able to purchase an app with a certain amount of calling funds attached to it, as well as make calls directly from the app. Existing Jajah users can also use the iPhone app to refresh their current Jajah balance.
With its two-pronged approach, Jajah hopes to change the calling card industry for the better. The company is hoping that its cards will force the Better Business Bureau to be more vigilant about the many ways traditional calling cards rip off consumers.
It’s also being smart about how it markets the Jajah card. It’s staying out of crowded gas station calling card sections and is instead focusing on retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, Rite Aid, and Staples. Jajah will also build up a presence at immigrant community centers, community offices, and state offices to inform the low-income population on why they’d be better off using its calling cards.
The company is white labeling its calling card technology so that other companies will be able to license it and offer calling cards of their own.
Much like , the next-generation credit card technology that at this month’s DEMO conference, Jajah’s calling card is a blend of old and new. The calling card industry has long needed a kick in the pants, and VoIP providers like Jajah need a way to make general consumers aware of the benefits of their technology.
Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. The conference takes place on October 18th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Sponsors can contact us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, .
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