mobile applications
Open Sesame – how public data stimulates innovation
Open data is widely spoken of as A Good Thing in the technology world, important in the meteoric rise of the Android mobile Operating System and vital in broadly sharing wealth. Android’s open source nature has helped produce a burgeoning ecosystem of applications and services, although it’s still playing catchup to Apple’s App Store. An [...]
Look out the Windows (is coming)
Microsoft Windows 7 was launched on Monday with a well-coordinated fanfare. Early signs are impressive but it’s banking as much on the mysterious allure of it being ‘Something Else’ for consumers, as it is on any fine detail around the new Operating System. It’s this same Something Else factor which HTC’s Android devices have effectively [...]
Retailers ready for transactional mobile
Show me the money (or at least the billing mechanism) Research published by trade bodies the IAB, AIME and IMRG and reported by NMA says that two-fifths of UK retailers are planning to launch a transactional mobile site or app within the next year. It also says that retailers admit to needing more training. How [...]
The WAC app attack
The new announcement of ‘WAC’ (Wholesale Applications Community) triggers mixed emotions. While its over-all mission remains admirable – to accelerate the delivery of an open standard applications platform – does the official formation of a company through a merger with the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), together with the assembly of a Board and Business Model [...]
Unlimited mobile data: RIP
O2 announced the end of unlimited mobile data tariffs and left several breathless towards the end of last week. But it was foreseeable and understandable. Smartphones and predominantly iPhones are the first devices which have properly sold mobile content to a mass audience. As a result, data traffic has scaled leading to congested pipes and [...]
Apple’s adult ban underlines Age Verification flaws
Apple’s new blanket rejection of adult content in mobile applications, (apart from Playboy’s), again brings home the sorry state of age verification on mobile devices.
GSMA’s ‘Wholesale Applications Community’ gives strength in numbers..
Yesterday I happened across a radio show discussing one of the major headlines from the first day of this weeks moster Mobile World Congress trade show. Intended as an antidote to the bemoaned mobile application fragmentation environment, the ‘Wholesale Applications Community’, is described in the GSMA’s release as ‘an ecosystem for the development and distribution [...]
Mobile apps: which shop?
A Mobile Data Association event on Wednesday offered further proof of the allure of the mobile application, if not its widespread practice. An impressive turnout at the RSS venue amassed to hear folk from Vodafone 360, Nokia Ovi, Bright AI, Juniper, Materna and Kisky Media. One of the most insightful came from a developer at [...]
Who’s in charge? – a new application frontier
Charging within free applications: the implications The power of free versus paid was put under the mobile application spotlight again last week, with Apple’s announcement that iPhone developers can now capitalise on payment within free applications, as well as in paid applications. I first blogged about the potential of the in-app upsell and “Freemium” after [...]
Life in the long tail
Hopefully temporary downtime for the excellent Twitter client, Dabr, led me to seek out an alternative through my Nokia E71 yesterday. Dabr’s brilliance lies in the simple provision of everything I want from a mobile web Twitter client, which renders excellently on my E71 and most other devices, as well as the traditional web. It’s [...]
