Posts tagged Global
THOUGHT: Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2011 – Windows Phone and Tablet PC
Mar 4th
THOUGHT: Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2011 – Windows Phone and Tablet PC
Posted by Arne Hess – on Friday, 04.03.11 – 19:12:45 CET under 09 – Thoughts – Viewed 210x
Tagged under: [Thought] [Microsoft] [MVP] [Most_Valuable_Professional] [MVP_Summit_2011] [Seattle] [Redmond] [Event] [Windows_Phone] [Windows_Phone_7] Tweet
As you might have seen, I haven’t posted anything to the::unwired this week but if you follow me on Twitter, you’ve seen that I was travelling. As a matter of fact I was again in Seattle for this year’s Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Global Summit, the largest customer event each year on Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond. As every year, it was a jam-packed week and in addition to some open, non-NDA sessions like “Windows without Walls” where Microsoft showed how the Windows ecosystem from the desktop to the Xbox 360 to mobile devices to the services plays to each other, there was a keynote by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO and for sure 1.5 days of deep-dive sessions with the Windows Phone product team which were – as you can imagine – under NDA.
Since the meaning of a non discloser agreement is that nothing should be disclosed, I can’t talk about anything presented or discussed by Microsoft. However, I want to express some personal feelings.
I’m working with Microsoft since late 1999 in the mobile space, which was the time when the first Pocket PC PDAs were close to be released, and during these 11 years, I’ve visited Microsoft quite often – up to three times a year. However, since the early days of Pocket PCs, a lot has changed. While in the beginning, the PDA business was driven by a small group of people, today the mobile business is one of Microsoft’s main focuses since it connects and unwires the PC, the server and the services. Beside the cloud, the mobile business might be one of the hot topics for Microsoft and therefore it had to change its mind and behavior how it treats its mobile business. But one thing is for sure: Microsoft takes its mobile business as serious as never before and it better has to do so since it’s part of the company’s future.
So what does it mean for the customers? It means that they will see many enhancements during the upcoming weeks, months and years. Microsoft has a clear vision how to develop Windows Phone into a direction to lead the market. While the company is well aware that Windows Phone 7 is yet not perfect, it has developed a roadmap how to catch-up with the competition while at the same time leading and differentiating itself from the competition. In my humble opinion, the time is gone where a single system will dominate a whole technology space and the mobile space isn’t anything different. We have great other OS’s and ecosystems available, namely iOS, Android and webOS and Windows Phone is just another. Nevertheless, the market is huge enough for at least 3, maybe 4 systems but the companies behind the OS’s and ecosystems have to prove this every day again. Customers have so many great choices today, they will hardly tolerate faults and therefore every single step has to be well planned.
What I’ve seen this week in Redmond shows that Microsoft is clearly aware of it. Windows Phone is the latest OS to a party where other operating systems have already found their fans. However, the recent Nokia / Microsoft announcement also shows that Microsoft knows that it have to catch-up by working with strong partners. As I initially mentioned, I can’t go any further here as well as Microsoft is in some parts not able to wider open the doors to its MVPs since the market landscape has dramatically changed. Was it 5 MVPs in the early Pocket PC days only, we are now over 70 and while we hadn’t had blogs, Twitter and Facebook in the early days, today it’s technically even possible to stream NDA sessions to the Internet without carrying an equipment worth of several thousand US$ but by simply using a mobile phone. Nevertheless, Microsoft provided a sneak-peek in the future and this looks promising enough to make me thinking that Windows Phone will be surely one of the OS which survives and maybe even lead the mobile space – at least in some areas.
Quite useful were the discussions with the product teams about current features and upcoming enhancements. For instance the product teams explained why some decisions were made this way and not the other way around and while I not agree with all of them, I at least value and understand Microsoft’s point. However, Microsoft also admitted that the one or the other design decision was a bad or at least not perfect one and that it works on improving the user experience in several areas. The product team is far away from being self-satisfied but knows that last year’s Windows Phone 7 launch was just the beginning. And thanks to Windows Phone’s new update mechanism, Microsoft is able to roll-out firmware updates faster. However, what we shouldn’t expect to see is a kind of “monthly patch day” as users experience on Windows PCs but it’s also clear that updates as well as upgrades have to be released way faster and more often then ever before. New services appear, uses cases change and therefore Microsoft will take the benefit of being in the driver seat for updates. Was it perfect with the pre-Nodo release? Far from it and Microsoft knows it. Will it be better in the future? At least I got the word but we will see.
Another thing which was a hot topic on the Microsoft campus was the future of Tablet PCs. For sure, Steve Ballmer was asked during his keynote what the company plans are (as well as Microsoft was already asked the same question during the recent Mobile World Congress) but neither Microsoft nor Steve Ballmer has given an answer yet. As Achim Berg said during the Windows Phone 7 press conference in Hamburg last fall, Windows Phone 7 is yet not an option which makes me kind of clueless. I understand that Microsoft comes from the PC business and therefore it might want to feature its PC OS (whichever it will be in the future) but in my humble opinion Windows Phone 7 would be the perfect tablet OS for today. It’s light, fast, comes with a touch optimized user interface as well as it features a whole ecosystem of apps and services. The iPad is a great example that customers wants something between its mobile / smartphone and the PC. The Netbook already proved it before, while the UMPC concept unfortunately failed to prove it, but Microsoft hasn’t detailed any upcoming Tablet PC plans at all. Again, I would vote for Windows Phone 7 for Tablet but it’s not up to me anyway. However, in my humble opinion Microsoft misses another opportunity if it’s not jumping the tablet bandwagon today, or it has to come around the corner later with something much better which will attract the customer in a way tablets do today already. Also I wasn’t the only one on the campus who thought that Windows Phone 7 would be the perfect OS (but I’ve also heard different voices) for a tablet but hey – it’s Microsoft’s business and money and customers will be able to vote when the product hits the stores.
Ok, this was a fairly long blog posting without saying or disclosing anything but then again, I just wanted to express my feelings that I think Microsoft is on the right track with Windows Phone 7 and that I’m really confident that the whole product group is working hard in the background to make it an even better mobile OS.
Cheers ~ Arne
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From www.theunwired.net
Global business
Feb 22nd
Investors gave a cool reception to Nokia’s announcement of “a broad strategic partnership” with Microsoft. The Finnish mobile phone company, which has lost ground to Apple and Google in the smart phone market, is adopting Windows Phone as its primary platform for smart devices, displacing its own Symbian software. Eric Schmidt, Google’s boss, revealed that his company had talked extensively to Nokia about adopting Google’s Android platform.
Sanofi-Aventis, a French pharmacology group, claimed victory in its six-month pursuit of Genzyme, an American biotech company, when its improved takeover offer of $20.1 billion was approved by Genzyme’s board.
An investment firm offered to buy Family Dollar for $7.6 billion. Cheap retailers are hot in America, while the economy is not.
Google launched a payment system that enables publishers to charge for online content through its operating platforms. Google announced its One Pass system the day after Apple set out its conditions for subscriptions sold through its App Store, for which it will take a 30 percent cut. Google will retain 10 percent of the payments and give media companies more control over subscriber data than Apple would.
Political economy
The World Bank said that surging food prices have pushed 44 million people worldwide into extreme poverty, which can often be a precursor to malnutrition. The number of undernourished people could rise to more than 1 billion this year.
China passed Japan to become the world’s second-biggest economy when Japan said its gross domestic product was worth $5.5 trillion in 2010. China’s amounted to $5.9 trillion.
In China, the rate of inflation rose again, to 4.9 percent in January, which was less than had been forecast. Meanwhile, China said imports of copper, iron ore and oil had accelerated in January. Imports of iron ore reached a record 76 million tons, up by 48 percent from a year earlier.
Jens Weidmann, Angela Merkel’s chief economic adviser, was picked to be the next president of Germany’s Bundesbank after the surprise announcement by Axel Weber that he would step down in April. Weber had been the putative front-runner to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet as head of the European Central Bank. A new favorite soon emerged for that job: Mario Draghi, the governor of Italy’s central bank.
Britain’s inflation rate also crept up again in January, to 4 percent or double the Bank of England’s target. The guessing game intensified about when the central bank would raise interest rates.
The yields on Portuguese government bonds surpassed 7 percent, the mark at which Portuguese officials have said the country’s borrowing costs would be unsustainable. Portugal’s finance minister criticized his E.U. colleagues after a meeting in Brussels for dithering over the details of expanding the eurozone’s bailout fund, saying the delay was harming not just Portugal, but the entire eurozone currency block.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff won a vote to limit an increase in the minimum wage to last year’s inflation rate, the first battle in her government’s effort to rein in the fiscal deficit and curb inflation.
Mexico suffered more drug violence. The top intelligence official in the northern city of Monterrey was murdered. An American immigration agent based in the U.S. embassy in Mexico City was shot dead and another was wounded as they drove to Monterrey.
From www.startribune.com
Global Smartphone Sales Rose 72 Percent in 2010, Gartner Says
Feb 9th
Global Smartphone Sales Rose 72 Percent in 2010, Gartner Says February 09, 2011, 3:27 AM EST
By Diana ben-Aaron
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Smartphone sales gained 72 percent last year, helping propel the worldwide mobile-phone market to 1.6 billion units, researcher Gartner Inc. said.
Research in Motion Ltd. and Apple Inc. became the fourth- and fifth-biggest mobile-phone companies, displacing Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB and the business now known as Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner said today in an e-mailed report.
Handsets with Google Inc.’s Android software overtook Nokia’s sales of Symbian smartphones in the fourth quarter, Gartner said. Symbian remained the best-selling smartphone system overall as other manufacturers also have it on their devices, the researcher said. Nokia, which remained the biggest mobile-phone vendor, saw its market share drop to 28.9 percent from 36.4 percent in 2009. Gartner reports sales to end users.
“The decline is not solely attributable to Nokia’s continuing deficiency in high-end devices but is in part the result of the growth of legitimate white-box sales,” Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst in Egham, U.K, said in the report.
So-called white box manufacturers, based mainly in China, produce small runs of mobile phones from standard components without the benefit of a major brand. White-box phones have expanded from the black market and informal channels to regular phone retailers, where they now sell in significant numbers and are tracked by researchers. Sales by such vendors reached 360 million units last year, Gartner said.
About half of all phones sold in western Europe and North America in the fourth quarter were smartphones, Gartner said. Android sales increased more than ninefold during the year.
Apple’s IPhone
Apple’s iPhone is now available from multiple operators in many markets, totaling 185 phone companies worldwide, Gartner said. Competition has reduced the price of data plans, though the selling price of the device is stable, according to the analysts.
“Apple is not targeting the mass market, which is a fundamental difference in approach from Android,” Gartner analysts said in the report.
South Korean mobile-phone makers, Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc., ranked second and third, respectively, on Gartner’s list.
–Editors: Vidya Root, Robert Valpuesta
To contact the reporter on this story: Diana ben-Aaron in Helsinki at dbenaaron1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root in Paris at vroot@bloomberg.net.
From www.businessweek.com
Global mobile phone market experiences further growth in fourth quarter
Jan 31st
The global market for mobile phones – both feature phones and smartphones – continued to grow during the fourth quarter of 2010, according to a new report from market research firm IDC.
According to the firm’s estimation, the global mobile phone market increased 17.9 percent at the end of last year, a new quarterly high. Handset manufacturers shipped 401.4 million units during the quarter, compared to 340.5 million during the same time period in 2009.
Overall, vendors shipped 1.3 billion units globally in 2010, which is up 18.5 percent from the 1.1 billion handsets that were sold in 2009.
“The mobile phone market has the wind behind its sails,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. “Mobile phone users are eager to swap out older devices for ones that handle data as well as voice, which is driving growth and replacement cycles.”
Not surprisingly, the sale of smartphones continues to drive overall market growth, Strategy Analytics recently revealed in its own market report. According to that study, smartphones accounted for 24 percent of the 94 million shipments the firm tracked in the fourth quarter for an increase of 75 percent.
From www.creativedepartment.com
Nokia’s global mobile-phone market share drops
Jan 28th
HELSINKI, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) — Nokia Corp.’s global market share of mobile phones shrank by 4 percent in the 4th quarter of 2010, the world’s largest mobile phone maker said Thursday.
Nokia said in its 2010 annual report that its global market share shrank from 35 percent a year ago to around 31 percent in the fourth quarter.
In the three-month period, the company sold 123.7 million mobile phones, up 12 percent from the previous quarter, but down 3 percent from a year earlier.
With competition in the mobile market growing tougher, Nokia, which performs well in the mid-end smart phone segment, is struggling in the high-end and low-priced phone segments, analysts say.
In the smart phone segment, its market share in Q4, 2010 was at 31 percent, decreasing significantly from 40 percent of the corresponding period in 2009.
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said Thursday that faced with growing competition and a changed business environment, the company will have to adjust itself faster.
Nokia’s share price at the Helsinki stock exchange fell 3.3 percent after the report’s release.
From news.xinhuanet.com
EU one step closer to global standard mobile-phone charger
Dec 29th
IDG News Service – The days of e-mailing the whole office to ask if anyone has a mobile-phone charger that fits your phone are numbered, as European standardization bodies on Wednesday released harmonized standards for a common charger.
The move is the latest in the European Union’s plans to introduce a global common mobile-phone charger, sparing business travelers in particular the frustration of being unable to find a suitable charger as their phone battery runs out.
The European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) have released the standards for interoperability needed for the manufacture of data-enabled mobile phones compatible with a new common charger. The compatibility will be on the basis of Micro-USB connectors. The new standards take into account safety risks and electro-magnetic emissions and ensure that common chargers have sufficient immunity to external interference.
As well as inconvenience for consumers, incompatibility of chargers is also a considerable environmental problem as users who change their mobile phones must usually acquire a new charger and dispose of the old one.
“Now it is time for industry to show its commitment to sell mobile phones for the new charger. The common charger will make life easier for consumers, reduce waste and benefit businesses. It is a true win-win situation,” said Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani.
In 2009, 14 leading mobile-phone producers — Apple, Emblaze Mobile, Huawei Technologies, LGE, Motorola Mobility, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research In Motion (RIM), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, TCT Mobile (ALCATEL), Texas Instruments and Atmel — agreed to work toward harmonization for chargers for data-enabled mobile phones.
The European Commission expects the first common chargers and mobile phones compatible with the new standards to reach the European market in early 2011.
Global Mobile Alert, a New Phone Application That Could Save Lives
Dec 15th
In 2009, 34,000 lives were lost due to distracted driving, bringing increased recognition to a cause inventor Demetrius Thompson has focused on for years. Los Angeles-based Thompson created Global Mobile Alert™ (GMA), the world’s first location-based platform and GPS-enabled early warning system that reduces driver distraction by producing an audible alert to warn drivers of an approaching traffic light, railroad crossing or school zone. Offered at $9.99 for a year’s subscription on the Android Market, GMA is available across the Navteq mapping system in a combined 27 American and Canadian cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto, among others.
Thompson was inspired to create GMA after being struck twice by drivers talking on cell phones in 1993. Acting on his anger, Thompson recalls the insurance company informing him that there were no government policies to protect pedestrians. Motivated to protect others and himself, he learned about source-coding, traffic light grids and programming. He also drew upon the technical knowledge he gained at Wilshire Computer College and National Technical School, after he dropped out of high school in the tenth grade, when his best friend was killed in a drive-by shooting.
Five years later, Global Mobile Alert Corporation had a patent and partnerships with Navteq and deCarta, launching GMA on the Google Android platform. Next year GMA will be available on the iPhone and the BlackBerry.
GMA was a finalist at the Telematics Awards for Best Portable Telematics Solution 2008, nominated for Best Portable Telematics Solution, Best Aftermarket Device and Best Telematics Service & Application for Commercial Vehicles in 2009 and a finalist for Industry Newcomer and Best Use of Telematics Technology in the Public sector in 2010. GMA has also received attention from advocacy groups. “As I’m touring the country making people aware of the dangers of distracted driving, I’m always looking for solutions I can offer. The Global Mobile Alert application is an awesome solution to prevent tragedies, like I experienced when I lost my 17-year-old son to a distracted driver,” says Cynthia Williams, who founded Love From Afar and created the Parents Against Distracted Driving Tour, which is taking her across the U.S. “Sharing a solution like GMA can save lives.”
For more information, visit http://www.globalmobilealert.com
Media contact:
Lisa Elia
Phone: 310-479-0216
e-mail: Email Contact
MXit becoming a global phenomenon
Dec 5th
One day we’ll be talking about MXit in the same way that we get misty-eyed about the Kreepy Krauly 
“Five million,” says my host. I’m being given a tour of the MXit Lifestyle offices in Stellenbosch and Paul Stemmet, general manager of sales, is telling me about the number of registered users on their classifieds section, launched 18months ago. I mull over the figure, that’s more South Africans than on Facebook.
“How many people do we have on MXit Xchange now?” Stemmet calls to a colleague. “It’s five million now isn’t it?”
He turns to me to make the point. “That’s one person to handle five million users,” he says. MXit is a lean operation.
“Actually it’s 10 million now,” the colleague calls back.
As the chief evangelist for the advertising and content side of MXit, Stemmet is always reciting the figures in PowerPoint presentations to the industry.
Half of the operation’s revenue comes from advertising – and numbers count.
Every South African family with teenage offspring knows MXit, the mobile instant messaging platform that took the country by storm from the moment it was launched in 2005. “My daughter uses it non-stop, straight through dinner and late into the night,” complains one parent. “Drives me mad. It’s like I’m invisible.”
“I’m a huge MXit fan when im at work mxit almst got fired bt hey,” a 20-something call centre agent admits. “i wud be with the fam i wouldn c0ncerntrate on fam c0nv0sor i would laugh alone nd ppl would l0ok at me like im psyco.” (It’s possible you needed a Babel Fish to decode that last comment, but you probably got the gist of it.)
Part social phenomenon, part tech sensation, MXit is usually in the news because some rat-faced lurker has been chatting to unsuspecting bokkies in order to lure their nubile forms into his clammy hands. For all the media coverage though, few of us realise how big MXit is, how successful a business it is or, for that matter, the extent of its involvement in mobile education and counselling.
The story of MXit is not just about the brats who ignore their parents because they’re chatting to their friends in incomprehensible txt spk, it’s also about the social impact of a service that offers Africa the Internet in a format that is almost free, easy to use, and available on a device that is almost as ubiquitous as the radio.
In South Africa, MXit dwarfs Facebook and Twitter and it’s growing rapidly elsewhere. One day we’ll be talking about MXit in the same way that we get misty-eyed about the Kreepy Krauly and Pratley Putty now: a South African innovation that went global.
“We are one of the largest mobile social networking systems in the world,” says CEO and founder Herman Heunis, described last year by Businessweek as “a shaggy-haired South African of Dutch descent”. “We have absolutely no intention of slackening the pace and every member of our 130-man team is motivated and driven to stun the world – watch this space.”
So, those numbers again: 23-million and counting registered users in South Africa alone, with up to 40000 registrations in a day; 400-million messages sent daily. Users from 127 different countries (especially popular in Indonesia and Swaziland), the source of 60000 Idols votes, compatible with more than 2500 handsets, the most prevalent of which is the Samsung E250 – the “AK-47 of phones” as Stemmet puts it, so named because of its ubiquity and ease of use.
MXit is democratic. It cuts across disparities of income and geography; it’s used as much by gogos and their grandchildren in remote villages as the scene kids who live in gated estates and learn to drive in Mommy’s X5. With the recent establishment of the Zakalaka and Mopix portals, which focus on content generated in Khayelitsha and Alexandra respectively, MXit has underscored its credentials as a channel able to bring together budding content producers and users lower on the income scale.
The key to MXit’s success across such contrasting audiences – and its genius – lies in its simplicity. The interface is not especially pretty. There are no flashy graphics and even games are text-based. This is why it works on virtually any handset, why it’s so easy to access, and why it is perfect for emerging markets where smart phones are still out of reach for most.
MXit is also good at making money, something that many other platforms have struggled with. Years ago they came up with MXit Moola, a currency which allows users to purchase anything from the latest hit tracks to a timed attack to enhance their base on the Sea of Tranquility in Moonbase, a hugely popular multiplayer game launched earlier this year. The philosophy is simple: lots of very small transactions add up to sizeable revenues. In fact, the platform is so effective in selling content that musician and Generations star Sipho Ngwenya will be launching his new album exclusively on MXit early next year, a first. He looked at the demographics of MXit users, saw the overlap with his fan base and decided the move made sense.
“I’m targeting people who’ve grown up with MXit,” he explains. This would also explain why MXit claims that the average age of its users is now 27, surprisingly high. MXit is still perceived as a product relevant to the teen market.
As for assumptions, for years I was convinced that MXit was just a cynical exercise in parting kids from their parents’ money – so I’m surprised to discover that social upliftment is core to their activities. Heunis, it seems, is as much of an idealist as he is a businessman. MXit Cares focuses on education initiatives, especially maths lessons, with HIV/Aids awareness and counselling through Childline. There’s also counselling for drug addicts, an initiative which has also just been launched in Kenya, where MXit was brought to market earlier this year in partnership with Safaricom.
Expert consensus is that, if Africa is going to make the most of its potential, the cellphone will be central to achieving those goals. The dream of a laptop for every child in Africa remains elusive; maybe it’s time we accepted that the cellphone will fill that role. Africa already has more than 500-million phones.
“I’m convinced the mobile phone is the silver bullet for Africa,” says Heunis. “When you enable a nation to communicate freely, you have made substantial inroads towards real progress.”
Back in MXit’s content and advertising sales division, I examine a whiteboard covered with brand names.
These are the campaigns that have run over the past six months. There are familiar names there – Absa, Cell C, Kotex, Chevy Spark – but also some surprising ones. Why would Investec and the JSE of all brands advertise on MXit?
“Investment education,” explains Stemmet.
Of course. All they had to do was look at the numbers, and it made perfect sense.
Japan iPhone Craze Attracts Global App Developers
Nov 29th
TOKYO (AP) — The iPhone’s popularity in Japan is cracking open an industry long thought inaccessible to outsiders.
For years, the typical Japanese cell phone — built to operate on a network hardly used anywhere else in the world — has been stuffed with quirky games and other applications that cater to finicky local tastes.
That helps explain why Japan’s mobile phone industry earned the nickname “Galapagos” — drawing parallels to the exotic animals that evolved on the isolated islands off South America — and why cell phones are called “galakei,” which combines “keitai,” the Japanese word for cell phone, with Galapagos.
Foreign developers of applications for phones didn’t give the Japanese market a second thought because of its insularity. But that is changing as the iPhone, for which tens of thousands of applications have been created, dominates Japanese smartphone sales.
Everywhere one turns, on commuter trains and urban cafes, people are tapping away at their iPhone screens in a relatively rare Japanese embrace of technology that isn’t homegrown.
Azusa Furushima, a 22-year-old college student, who has an iPhone in a glittery Hello Kitty case, says she already has about 35 apps, including those for dieting and practicing typing.
American and other foreign developers for the iPhone now have eyes on this potentially lucrative market. And Japanese users, thanks to galakei culture that has long had services that charged small fees, such as “i-mode,” are used to paying for their applications.
“Japanese are well-educated. They will pay for applications,” said Brian Lee, a manager at Taiwan-based Penpower, which sells an app for digitally organizing business cards. “A lot of developers are coming into this market.”
Japanese developers, previously trapped into targeting galakei, in turn have a chance for a piece of the global iPhone pie, which topped 3 billion application downloads globally in less than 18 months, according to Apple. Apple takes 30 percent of the application sales, but the rest goes to developers.
Apple doesn’t give iPhone sales breakdowns by country. But Japan makes up a significant chunk of the 70 million iPhones sold worldwide so far, including a record 14.1 million last quarter.
Smartphones, mostly iPhone models which top sales rankings, make up 16 percent of Japanese cell phone sales of 35 million a year, according to Gfk Marketing Services Japan, which track such data.
Finnish developer Rovio Mobile, behind the “Angry Birds” game, which has racked up 27 million global downloads in a year, introduced a Japanese-language version a month ago.
The game, which features bubbly headed peevish birds that fight pig-like creatures, has been No. 1 in iPhone games in the U.S. and 70 other nations. Hopes are high to move up from No. 6 to No. 1 someday in Japan as well.
Erin Gleason, spokeswoman for Foursquare, a popular U.S. location-based mobile application, says the service, which has more than 4 million users worldwide, is arriving in Japan soon, although she said details won’t be disclosed until early 2011.
“We will be focusing on internationalization in the next couple of quarters, and we feel that Japan is an important market for us,” she said.
The growing sales of smartphones running the Android operating system from Google Inc. are expected to expand the application business even further, from not just Softbank Corp., the only carrier to offer the iPhone, to giant rivals NTT DoCoMo and KDDI Corp.
Japanese electronic maker Sharp Corp. is even bringing out Android mobile devices called Galapagos — in a tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation that underlines the Japanese electronics maker’s ambitions for global appeal.
Cashing in on the iPhone fad comes in all sizes.
Hawken King, a 32-year-old Briton, who founded a tiny venture in Tokyo called Dadako, which means “brat” in Japanese, is doing all right, selling his product to just 20,000 iPhone users around the world. About half of them are American, but a third are Japanese.
His 350 yen “Facemakr” allows people to easily and smoothly create avatars, or facial likenesses, on iPhone’s touch panel, choosing images of noses, eyes and hairstyles. It costs $2.99 in the U.S.
Developers like King say the success of the iPhone has evened out the playing field, allowing for a diverse range of products, rather than a winner-take-all or carrier-controlled market, which in the past favored established companies over newcomers.
“We’ll soon see a wave of outside prospectors flooding in for the gold in the hills of Omotesando and Harajuku,” predicts Mark Hiratsuka, director of Snapp Media, an independent mobile application promoter, referring to the Tokyo areas equivalent of Silicon Valley.
“Right now, only the very smartest developers are aware of the potential here. We’re about to see that bust wide open,” he said.
Japan iPhone craze attracts global app developers
Nov 26th
TOKYO (AP) – The iPhone’s popularity in Japan is cracking open an industry long thought inaccessible to outsiders.
For years, the typical Japanese cell phone – built to operate on a network hardly used anywhere else in the world – has been stuffed with quirky games and other applications that cater to finicky local tastes.
That helps explain why Japan’s mobile phone industry earned the nickname “Galapagos” – drawing parallels to the exotic animals that evolved on the isolated islands off South America – and why cell phones are called “galakei,” which combines “keitai,” the Japanese word for cell phone, with Galapagos.
Foreign developers of applications for phones didn’t give the Japanese market a second thought because of its insularity. But that is changing as the iPhone, for which tens of thousands of applications have been created, dominates Japanese smartphone sales.
Everywhere one turns, on commuter trains and urban cafes, people are tapping away at their iPhone screens in a relatively rare Japanese embrace of technology that isn’t homegrown.
Azusa Furushima, a 22-year-old college student, who has an iPhone in a glittery Hello Kitty case, says she already has about 35 apps, including those for dieting and practicing typing.
American and other foreign developers for the iPhone now have eyes on this potentially lucrative market. And Japanese users, thanks to galakei culture that has long had services that charged small fees, such as “i-mode,” are used to paying for their applications.
“Japanese are well-educated. They will pay for applications,” said Brian Lee, a manager at Taiwan-based Penpower Inc., which sells an app for digitally organizing business cards. “A lot of developers are coming into this market.”
Japanese developers, previously trapped into targeting galakei, in turn have a chance for a piece of the global iPhone pie, which topped 3 billion application downloads globally in less than 18 months, according to Apple. Apple takes 30 percent of the application sales, but the rest goes to developers.
Apple doesn’t give iPhone sales breakdowns by country. But Japan makes up a significant chunk of the 70 million iPhones sold worldwide so far, including a record 14.1 million last quarter.
Smartphones, mostly iPhone models which top sales rankings, make up 16 percent of Japanese cell phone sales of 35 million a year, according to Gfk Marketing Services Japan, which track such data.
Finnish developer Rovio Mobile, behind the “Angry Birds” game, which has racked up 27 million global downloads in a year, introduced a Japanese-language version a month ago.
The game, which features bubbly headed peevish birds that fight pig-like creatures, has been No. 1 in iPhone games in the U.S. and 70 other nations. Hopes are high to move up from No. 6 to No. 1 someday in Japan as well.
Erin Gleason, spokeswoman for Foursquare, a popular location-based mobile application, says the service, which has more than 4 million users worldwide, is arriving in Japan soon, although she said details won’t be disclosed until early 2011.
“We will be focusing on internationalization in the next couple of quarters, and we feel that Japan is an important market for us,” she said.
The growing sales of smartphones running the Android operating system from Google Inc. are expected to expand the application business even further, from not just Softbank Corp., the only carrier to offer the iPhone, to giant rivals NTT DoCoMo and KDDI Corp.
Japanese electronic maker Sharp Corp. is even bringing out Android mobile devices called Galapagos – in a tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation that underlines the Japanese electronics maker’s ambitions for global appeal.
Cashing in on the iPhone fad comes in all sizes.
Hawken King, a 32-year-old Briton, who founded a tiny venture in Tokyo called Dadako, which means “brat” in Japanese, is doing all right, selling his product to just 20,000 iPhone users around the world. About half of them are American, but a third are Japanese.
His 115 yen ($1.40) “Facemakr” allows people to easily and smoothly create avatars, or facial likenesses, on iPhone’s touch panel, choosing images of noses, eyes and hairstyles.
Developers like King say the success of the iPhone has evened out the playing field, allowing for a diverse range of products, rather than a winner-take-all or carrier-controlled market, which in the past favored established companies over newcomers.
“We’ll soon see a wave of outside prospectors flooding in for the gold in the hills of Omotesando and Harajuku,” predicts Mark Hiratsuka, director of Snapp Media, an independent mobile application promoter, referring to the Tokyo areas equivalent of Silicon Valley.
“Right now, only the very smartest developers are aware of the potential here. We’re about to see that bust wide open,” he said.
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Online:
“Angry Birds”: http://www.rovio.com/
“Facemakr”: http://www.facemakr.com/
Penpower Inc.: http://www.penpowerinc.com/
– AP
