Hits and Misses of 2010–event round-up

A belated round-up of our December 2010 event held during Technology World at London ExCel from Viji Pathy.

MoMoLo's Hits and Misses of 2010 event was a panel session which reflected on what had been happening in the mobile world during 2010 and looked forward to what we might see in 2011. The panel represented different areas of the mobile industry and gave us their views on the successes and failures of 2010 and their thoughts for the future. And perhaps it’s timely we take another look at our thoughts and predictions for 2011 – were we way off or is it too soon to call it?

Chair

Helen Keegan – Mobile Monday London's organiser and specialist consultant in mobile marketing and media

Panellists

George Nimeh - Digital marketing and brand communications expert, formerly a digital director for iris Worldwide

Peter Globokar - Managing director at Mooreland Partners, a global investment firm specialising in mergers & acquisitions for technology industries

Jo Rabin - Mobile Monday London organiser, chair of the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and mobile consultant

Matt Wolff – VP of mobile at Badoo, an online dating and social networking site, formerly CTO at Flirtomatic

The panel initially opened up about the phones they used, most panellists using at least 2 devices (no big surprise there). These included the Nokia N95 8GB, HTC Desire, Nokia E71, iPad, Nexus One, iPhone and Blackberry handsets so covered the broad spectrum of Android, iOS, Symbian and Blackberry smartphone platforms.

The panel then considered the general highlights of 2010. These included the fact that there was now a range of visible platforms creating a competitive market, and that Android had seen the popularisation of open platforms allowing innovative development. Google's Chrome to Phone which allowed better interoperability between PC and phone was also a great innovation. Hit devices included the iPad from Apple with its superior synchronisation, the iPad also included a great browser experience. Some of the 2010 games such as Angry Birds were popular downloads though it was thought that most users only used a very small proportion of the apps they downloaded on a regular basis.

Moving on to specific winners and losers during the year, although quite a few launches had taken place such as Windows Phone 7 platform, and devices such as the Nokia N8 and the Blackberry Torch, the panel thought the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy showcased the transformative power of tablets to optimise communication technologies with a great reading and browsing experience, although it was considered still early days for tablets.

Where were phones going in the future? One observation was that most phones now used similar hardware and the main selling point would be the end-to-end experience including software features such as the UI/UX and provision of services, companies like Apple and platforms like Android which had succeeded in providing better experience to developers and consumers had done well.

Innovation could grow via opensource systems like Android, although it was possible that proprietary systems like RIM's Blackberry had some advantages controlling the whole end-to-end experience.

Winning devices were the HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy and Android as a platform. Losers were Nokia and Sony Ericsson as well as RIM, whose closed Blackberry platform made interoperability difficult.

The panel were asked if featurephones still had a role or did most consumers now want a smartphone? Especially in the West, consumers were increasing expecting the computing power of smartphones and tablets in their mobile devices. Even in the emerging markets where featurephones currently sell very well, the market will start to shrink as smartphones start to sell for $100 or less. The distinction between smartphones and featurephones was also starting to blur because of the price-points getting closer and because you can do many of the same things in terms of mobile web and applications in both kinds of devices. Although some services are far more popular in emerging markets with predominantly featurephones, such as mobile payments in Africa and services such as Badoo whose main market is Latin America, this may be partly due to better marketing and collaboration in those markets.

Additionally the cost of data, or at least the perceived cost of data, is still and issue for smartphone technologies, many users were unclear on what a MB of data actually meant for them in terms of actual UX on their mobile? Although flat rate tariffs have helped user take-up of data services, bandwidth can still be a real issue for users considering access to mobile services. Although high data usage is often consumed via WiFi (e.g. 80% of data usage on iPhone), genuine mobile access can still be impossible for some services when universal coverage is not available on the move, often when they are most needed!

The panel considered some of the 2010 service launches by network operators. Vodafone 360 for instance had not been a great success, with the devices not selling and the services not used – should the network operators even be delivering these kind of services? Network operators can have a complacent view of 'owning' their customers but trying to force users to do everything via operator controlled channels is generally a bad idea. For instance by not providing user with access to app stores other than the operators, which generally did not include many apps! Operators should perhaps concentrate on their provision of carrier technologies, such as analysing and providing consistent coverage, rather than trying to own the app space as different competencies were required for each. Users generally preferred open handsets without any restricting operator customisations. Where operators had been successful was through marketing strategies such as Orange Wednesdays cinema tickets and O2 Priority tickets, they could perhaps even enhance these with LBS solutions etc.

Next the panel considered questions from the audience. The first question was whether the WAC (Wholesale Applications Community) initiative was going to be a hit next year? There were some challenges for operators in terms of keeping pace with operator customisations of platforms, even OEMs have found this a challenge, and pointless operator platform differentiation rather than standardised platforms was probably unhelpful. It could however be a good initiative to support app developers, especially with unified payment gateways which are still an issue for developers outside of the Apple ecosystem.

The next question asked what the panel thought of Windows Phone 7. It has some good points such as great UI which used interesting technologies such as transition effects, but it didn't multitask well (yet). Microsoft hasn't been able to flood the market in the same way they did with their desktop OS, despite massive investment in mobile, due the range of other open mobile platforms being used including Android, Symbian and Meego. Although WP7 has some great features, there was doubt that Microsoft have provided any unique enough draws which would entice users from other platforms, so the jury was out on whether it would ultimately be successful. The questioner thought the unique features were perhaps the PC integration for business users.

The panel then considered a question on whether the media, who have launched a lot of mobile apps in 2010, will do better in 2011? There were mixed views, although there have been a lot of media apps, generally these have only been for the iPhone. Media companies are still unsure of how to really innovate and create a business model with services on mobile, e.g. publishers needed to create more innovation in apps rather than just creating glorified RSS readers. There were also the on-going questions of mobile web versus native apps and support for the range of platforms. Generally, there was still a lot of learning to be done on what users wanted from apps, for instance whether users sought something resembling the hardcopy format, and IP issues may become increasingly important, as often the rights to publish in non print based media needs to be clarified. Finally the payment model is still an issue for publishers, which free, advertising or subscription models being tested. These issues might take longer than a year to satisfactorily resolve.

The last question the panel were asked by the chair was what they would like to see in 2011? Answers included a range of interesting devices with genuine differentiation, more cooperation between stakeholders to provide innovate solutions for end users, effective mobile payment mechanisms, better search and discovery mechanisms for apps and services on all platforms, and investment for the range of highly innovate small mobile companies starting up.

Round-up of our 6 June 2011 event: HTML vs. Apps–You Decide

This month’s write-up is brought to you by regular Mobile Monday London volunteer, Viji Pathy. Viji is an independent mobile software consultant at MoKaadu Ltd

MoMoLo's “HTML or Apps - You Decide” was a debate on the relative merits of applications and the web as a channel to engage consumers and provide mobile services and products, now and in the near future. The panel consisted of 2 teams with each speaker getting 5 minutes to contribute to the case for their team. The event was sponsored by the lovely folks at BlackBerry.

Chaired by Leila Makki, the debate began with an introduction by Andy Tipton from RIM discussing the main factors which have come together to make mobile such an interesting commercial proposition recently:

• Connectivity used to be the most challenging factor as well as the most expensive element of utilising mobile as a channel, but mobile technologies have become more and more advanced and able to provide always-on connectivity with the advent of WiFi, WiMax and 4G.
• Device Hardware capabilities have increased to allow advanced functionality to be executed on the client side, whether through apps or via the browser.
• Device Software platforms have evolved from the days of basic J2ME devices and only a few smartphone platforms such as Symbian and Windows Mobile, to a range of advanced mobile platforms in the last few years, and on the web side the HTML5 and JavaScript specification advances are facilitating advanced mobile web propositions.
• Finally the Business Model opportunities to monetise services (whether by credit card transaction, advertising or operator billing) has contributed, as well as the ability to streamline user interaction via a 1 click process, such as iTunes or the “one-click” apps introduced by RIM. Andy concluded RIM themselves use a range of native, web, and hybrid solutions which use web technologies wrapped into downloadable apps.

The debate started with Team Captain of Team Apps, Sam Machin (website) from O2. He told us the key advantage of apps was discoverability, the first thing a user could do to find a service they wanted was use the in-built app store on most devices, easily accessible from the home screens, select the relevant category, find a suitable app and complete the process with a 1-click installation. Web searches on the other hand meant using the browser to open a search engine, which might output thousands of pages making it hard to find something which met the user's need directly amongst so much information. Sam also noted that nowadays most apps on the major smartphone platforms are not web apps but native apps which make full use of the platform functionality, and countered the argument that developers were easier to find for web development by noting that there was increasingly huge opportunities and availability for native app developers.

Team Captain of Team Web, Bryan Rieger of Yiibu, made the first argument for Team Web by talking about numbers – of the world population of over 6.7 billion, around 74% have a mobile phone, meaning the are over 5 billion mobile users on the planet. He compared this figure to the number of users for particular smartphone platforms, such as around 100 million iPhone users in total. In addition prices were rapidly coming down for all devices which would only increase overall numbers, and most devices already came with a browser. In fact in many countries, a large proportion of web users only had access to the mobile version, this was especially true of the developing world and emerging markets, but even true of significant numbers in the West. He also noted that there might be limited opportunities to get a return on investment for businesses investing in native only mobile solutions, because of the high development costs and increasingly low prices being charged for apps on most app stores, for instance a large proportion of apps on Apple's store charged the minimum 59p, and significant proportions on both the App Store and the Android Market were completely free. Bryan concluded with the point that everyone has access to the web and that users want the choice of access to the same services from whichever device they are using, and an integrated experience to all services from their device such as links to social networking sites which were only available in the web.

Alex Watson (website), who is head of app development for Dennis Publishing, continued the debate for Team Apps saying the purpose of a web site was often not easily understood by many normal consumers in simple terms, i.e. what was it for? Web sites could often be very complex but lacking a clear purpose. Single purpose apps make sense to users, who are able to easily find a specific utility, download it, and easily navigate to it whenever required from the home screen – this made users build a regular relationship with the app and use the service more. By giving users a more focused experience, concentrating on limited functionality of use to them, users are rewarded and that's why apps are so popular.

Mauricio Reyes from Flirtomatic, then continued the debate for Team Web, he also compared the numbers involved, noting that Apple and Google boasts of 100m iPhones sold and 350K Android devices activated every day were not so impressive compared with the 5.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide. Even now feature phones are still selling in huge numbers, so any business should ask itself ‘who are my users?’, ‘what devices do they have?’, and ‘which ones will they be likely to update to in the future?’ Users of mobile services don’t fall neatly into small groups of handset owners so when considering where to put your services, mobile web has to be a major part of your mobile strategy. Mauricio noted that Flirtomatic's revenue split (via add-ons such as virtual gifts) was 74% from mobile web compared to 26% from native apps.

Rebecca Pate who is Mobile Product Manager for Tesco, concluded the debate for Team Apps, noting that at Tesco, native apps have encouraged users to come back regularly to use Tesco's services – this was because apps provided a personalised service for the user with push notifications and personalised widgets which encouraged habitual use, they offered a more enhanced and optimised UX with features such as transition effects and gesture interaction, and integration with other services on the device such as messaging, as well as with device hardware such as accelerometers and the camera.

Finally Cait Roberts (blog) from MePlease, concluded the debate for Team Web, noting that mobile search was getting better and better on the mobile web, with stats indicating that mobile search engine traffic had increased 247% in the past year and that 49% of users on the mobile web had made a purchase based on the mobile web search, these figures were very high compared with the comparative figures for native app usage and purchases. She noted that often apps did not give users a satisfactory experience and they couldn't interact with all the services they required, and mobile users tended to blame the brand rather than the device for a poor mobile experience. So brands needed to create a mobile strategy which include first and foremost a mobile web solution to get full awareness amongst all their users. She cited M&S and Dominos Pizza and other examples of brands having great mobile web solutions as a major part of their mobile strategy had resulted in huge increases in sales.

Next the panel considered questions from the audience.

Did the cost of app development (averaging £20K per app) justify the investment? Rebecca thought it did as Tesco had recouped the investment in their iPhone app within a week of publishing, because of its popularity with users. Sam thought the same and also noted that the mobile web, although potentially a large platform, did not yet equate to real users and and a real market. Bryan however felt that only targeting a tiny proportion of (usually your richest) users could leave huge parts of the population unable to access your services, which was an issue for large companies and government organisations. Team Web also though that the investment did not often pay off if you were relying directly on monetising the app without linking to other business models.

What about services requiring complex functionality, were they better served by mobile web or apps? Sam noted that O2 are currently working on very complex apps using telephony and rich graphics which the mobile web did not yet support. How did the fragmentation of browsers affect the web as a an ubiquitous platform? Cait thought that as long as your baseline for each solution was chosen well, the web could provide better solutions for each user, for instance touch web sites and better search and discovery. Was integrating to web based social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook important for mobile? Alex agreed that a multi-platform approach should be taken, with services available everywhere but with the UX tailored to specific users, such as integration with device features such as sending messages for app users. Did advertising models used in apps have an impact, for example for competitor adverts? Sam thought this was not more of an issue in apps, which gave users a more controlled UX, for instance allowing users to do a highly targeted search in an app store, whereas search engines like Google returned users a lot of generic adverts.

Will apps end be like ringtones, i.e. hugely hyped for a few years then disappear? Alex thought ringtones were a different case because users were often scammed after purchase, but Cait thought there might be a similar problem emerging with apps where unsatisfied users were unable to get refunds from app stores. Was app store curation going to be an issue for apps, for instance with Apple controlling distribution and placing restrictions on app store content (such as gambling apps), businesses were not free to create products in the way they could on the web? Team Web agreed but Alex noted there could be benefits for app store curation, giving the users a better experience, Team App also noted the control Google had over decreasing rankings in user searches.

Is there a monetisation model using the web for software creators not linked to an existing business, such as games creators? Cait thought there was and pointed out web based social media is increasingly monetising web solutions through various models, Mauricio also agreed noting Flirtomatic uses a model of online payment for virtual currency and gifts which has proved successful.

How did the panel see things progressing in 5-10 years time? Sam thought that although the web would have long since caught up on existing technologies, it will always trail future technologies introduced in apps by companies such as Apple because of the need for standards agreements, so premium services will always be available first on high-end platforms and devices. Alex also noted that the technologies introduced in apps have a positive effect on the mobile web and vice versa, so there would be mutual benefit in having both options. If the browser ended up being just another app, how would the tide away from the web be stopped? Bryan thought there were issues with moving into an app-only scenario, with companies like Apple and Microsoft tying businesses and developers into their proprietary platforms, whereas the web provided them with a layer of abstraction. Alex thought there were similar issues on the web with companies like Google wanting everything free to sell their own business model.

Could installable web apps be another option? Sam agreed noting that the technologies used were less important than the ability for users to have focused installable solutions easily available to them on their device home screens. Is it the case that apps are the more reliable option now, but that will change in future as the mobile web becomes a better platform? Bryan thought that the mobile web was not very far behind apps in technology terms, and Cait emphasised that that they key was finding out where your consumers are currently accessing web services from and supporting that channel. The final comments from the audience supported a multi-platform strategy, with apps and the web used for different purposes as required.

With the debate rounded up, the audience cast the final vote on which solution they saw as the future. The result was very close indeed, but the winners were...Team Web – Bryan, Cait and Mauricio.

A big thank you to all our speakers – Leila Makki, Sam Machin, Alex Watson, Rebecca Pate, Bryan Rieger, Mauricio Reyes, Cait Roberts and Andy Tipton. A big thank you to our sponsors, BlackBerry – don’t forget to check out their BlackBerry Developer Zone and you may also be interested to take a look at this year's BlackBerry Developer Challenge... lots of categories and lots of prizes on offer.

Our next events are on 20 June on Geo-spatial matters with UCL and on 4 July, where we’re taking a look at the state of the developer nation with BlueVia. Registration is now open for both events at http://momolo.org