Mobile Augmented Reality is it’s time reallly now or 2013? Or 2014? I notice that today for the first time Mobile own space at Adtech mentions AR. Which is nice… but…
Wasn’t AR time meant to be NOW! It was meant to be 2012. Well I thought it would have been and so did Martha Lane Fox when we chatted at GEW 2011.
But…
You have to love this 🙂
The operator said that its T-Venture division is now able to acquire majority holdings in startups and has adjusted the structure of its venture funds to enable quicker decisions on attractive targets, Nico Goericke, a DT spokesman told Bloomberg.
Goericke added that T-Venture now has a total budget of around €450 million for investments and plans to step up the investment frequency.
Of note, DT CEO, Rene Obermann took charge of innovation strategy this year–after board member Ed Kozel stepped down–and is pushing for alliances with startups to happen faster. T-Venture did not invest enough of its budget before, an unnamed source told Bloomberg.
“Through this new structure, we want to integrate startups as majority investments into DT and speed up our pace of innovation,” Goericke said, declining to identify potential targets.
Which is interesting, as last year O2 (of Telefonica fame) asked me to be part of a focus group which started off with the idea that there was no more money in telephones and so which starts up areas for mobile would be best to invest in. Of course, I said mobile gaming etc. But perhaps they were looking for something deeper…?
It would seem so as Telefónica says it will now invest €68 million over the next five years in a network of technology venture capital funds that will be open to other public and private investment groups.
To promote this effort, the operator has launched Amérigo, a new international network of technology venture capital funds, to identify and finance innovative businesses in the digital industry to help offset Telefónica’s declining telephone revenue. You gotta love that!
“We have long understood that to succeed we need to understand and embrace the digital innovation ecosystem,” Telefónica Digital CEO Matthew Key said in a statement. “This has driven our investment in initiatives such as Campus Party and Wayra. Amérigo marks the next stage in this strategy as we seek to combine the funding power of private and public funds to create a real engine for stimulating technology innovation.”
Personally I love Wayra and if I wasnt so tied to Manchester and my family commitments up here we would be down there with our new idea Massmob. As London seems like place to be for all these tech and mobile at the moment.
However, on a global scale, perhaps the action is really abroad as T elefónica Digital has confirmed that it will initially target Spain, Colombia, Chile and Brazil, with early investments expected to be about €1 million depending on the size and stage of the project.
Whilst, the network of technology VC funds have raised €300 million which will enable it to oversee projects with an estimated value of €1 billion, according to Telefónica Digital, which will manage the overall business.
Read more: Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica revamp startup investment strategy – FierceWireless:Europe http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/deutsche-telekom-telef-nica-revamp-startup-investment-strategy/2012-09-05?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal#ixzz25gQhj3ul
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Once in a Blue moon – I give an idea to the universe.
Here is my idea for an app which incentivises people to give money to charities they don’t know anything about.
Hope you like it – and even if you thinks it rubbish – I would like your votes and thoughts.
The User journey.
A page on your phone or in facebook where you give money to charity. This is linked into all the social platforms. So you can like it, tweet about it etc.
The app then talks to facebook and picks ten top friends (or you can choose which ones from a bigger list.)
The app then randomly picks whether you will get a game, app or piece of music (or you can choose which one you prefer)
The app then picks a random charity from our database of either a local, national or international charity they would like to give the donation to.
Your friend then gets a social notification that you are using the application – this happens automatically be that through twitter, facebook, or email.
This could also be a request to allow the friend to look through their apps, music, or ebooks so that they can pick the item they want.
The app gets permission to go into your friends accounts and create a top ten of free downloads you can share.
The app searches through and gives them a top ten in usage terms and then randomly picks something from the list. Be that a tune, an app, a game, or an ebook.
The app then posts up on your TimeLine that you are giving money to a certain charity and getting this for free from your named friend.
Which helps the charity advertise itself, you feel all warm inside, gets you a free download, and you have something to chat with your chosen friend about next time you see them down the pub 😉
I would love your thoughts on it – so click here to help with the idea
Or feel free to steal it and make it and make the world a better place 🙂
A great article speaking the truth about mobile apps, gaming and the mobile marketing industry which sometimes underpins it.
Mobile applications have a central place in the wireless industry but despite their pivotal role, most developers who create these apps find it very difficult to succeed in this business and even harder to make money at it.
Which might be all to do with the reasons alluded to in a great blog by NW business angel Malcolm Evans in which he states:
“Marx once railed against what he called “surplus labour” – the factory owners’ regime of absolutely minimum pay to thus get rich through the value created by the endless toils of their workers. But at least they got paid – there are vast numbers of apps producers who live in blind hope.
Hardware providers have a rather wonderful time in that 1,000s of apps producers compete to add value to their devices with absolutely no guarantee of any reward. Would it be an overstatement to suggest that this is to some extent a free market verging on a fools’ market?”
A damning summary indeed. But he might have a point. As new data from Evans Data Corp. (not relation – we don’t know for sure…) released findings from its latest survey of global developers. The company revealed that the vast majority of application developers develop their apps on a part-time basis while they earn their incomes in other ways.
The firm found that among developers who create apps specifically for distribution via app stores, just more than one-fourth (26%) are full-time mobile app professionals who derive most of their income from their apps. The largest group (41%) is made up of moonlighters who have professional, full-time jobs as software developers and create their apps in their spare time. (It are these developers that we want to reach and help with Massmob – a new idea to become a portal for pay as you go brand able mobile games and so become an ecosystem to help part time freelance mobile game creators.
Another 22 percent are serious “hobbyists” who do not develop software in their regular jobs but do have technical backgrounds and the skills to create mobile apps in their free time. The rest (11%) are students and recent graduates who are also developing apps in their spare time.
While the dominance of moonlighters and other part-time approaches to this business suggests that developers are not willing to gamble their careers on their mobile apps, the fact that 26 percent are making a living at it is actually good sign for an industry that is as new as this one, said Ben Hanley, senior product manager at Evans Data.
“We expect the industry to mature,” he said. “Over time you will see the proportion of full-time developers grow relative to the other major profiles.”
Advice for developers: follow your passion but be smart about it
Azita Arvani, principal of Arvani Group, has advised numerous companies on how to build mobile businesses over the years and offered some suggestions for those that are trying to make a mark in the app development industry.
“Whatever you do, you must be passionate about it, and not working out of your domain of expertise or level of interest,” she said.
She offered this list of tips for developers:
“You want loyal customers,” she said.
Two successful app development firms to learn from: OneLouder and Riverman Media
Two firms that have built viable app businesses with very loyal customers include OneLouder and Riverman Media. OneLouder launched as a formal business with venture funding and is scaling up quickly. Riverman Media has successfully evolved out of a moonlighting business and has chosen to remain small and independent.
OneLouder, which was launched in July 2011 to build social mobile applications, was established initially to sell its initial product, TweetCaster. The company says that TweetCaster is the most popular third-party app based on Twitter. It has a handful of other products, including SportCaster and FriendCaster.
| TweetCaster |
OneLouder was spun off from the mobile app distributor, Handmark. Evan Conway, then an executive at Handmark and now president of OneLouder, said that from the very beginning he and his colleagues had a very specific vision for the new business. They wanted to build a business with apps that use Android and Twitter in creative ways, that are free, and that would generate revenues from advertising immediately. This type of business can’t be built without infrastructure, a technical staff, and people to manage the advertising-based monetization part of the business. The company raised funds from Handmark and several venture capital firms to support its launch.
OneLouder is already self-supporting. Since last July, Conway said, OneLouder customers have downloaded 15 million of its apps. Between four and five million people will use their products this month. More than a million use the products on any given day and a typical customer uses their app ten to 15 times per day. OneLouder is seeing more than a billion ad impressions per month.
Conway said OneLouder’s business model comes down to three things: “Build absolutely the best products we can, attract an audience and monetize it through best-in-class advertising capability.”
But continually winning over users and building momentum is not easy, Conway said. For one thing, there is so much going on in the industry that companies can get distracted from their core objectives. For another thing, it’s really difficult work. OneLouder now has 26 employees. The team completes at least one product update every week and it is continually beefing up its marketing and advertising efforts.
“On an ongoing basis you need to have the stamina to really play this game every week,” he said. “Every week is 2 percent of your year.”
Riverman Media specializes in stylized and futuristic 2D mobile games. The firm has turned down two offers from prominent social mobile companies that wanted to acquire it.
| Pizza Vs. Skeletons |
Jacob and Paul Stevens, two brothers, started the company in 2005 as a sideline business but the business has been self supporting for the past couple years. The developers say they’ve delivered 2 million downloads of their products, although they won’t divulge how many of those were purchased. Its most recent release, Pizza vs. Skeletons, was awarded the iPhone game of the week.
The Stevens brothers have a clear and unwavering business philosophy, and that is to stick to their aesthetic principles and maintain their independence in the industry. They focus entirely on their core skill of developing 2D games for iOS devices and they strive keep their users loyal intrigued by continuing to improve their products.
“Our goal is really to just earn enough money that we can decline outside money, fund ourselves and keep making better and better games,” Stevens said.
Jacob Stevens said they keep their costs and risks low by focusing on 2D graphics and avoiding network-based games that are costly to serve and scale. They do not advertise, preferring to find their users through message boards and other “organic” means, and they have no interest in in-app purchasing. They charge from 99 cents to $2.99 per download.
Stevens said the best way to succeed in this business, from his perspective, is to observe the following: have a concept that can be explained in one sentence to people who don’t know anything about apps, keep the team small and expenses to a minimum. His firm won’t spend more than $10,000 on equipment and software to create a product, he said.
“If you understand that a game can come out from an AAA studio and flop on the iPhone, you have to be incredibly careful with the amount you spend making a game,” he said.
Among mobile consumers of traditionally print media, tablet users are most easily engaged with advertising, according to a new research report “Mobile’s Role in the Consumer’s Media Day.” The report, released Monday (July 16) by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, examines several key factors in mobile media consumption and consumers’ advertising engagement on these different mobile platforms.
Not only do media consumers prefer the tablet over the smartphone for print- and video-based content, but they also have a stronger degree of ad interaction on the tablet as well. The report finds that nearly half (47%) of respondents say they engage with ads on that device more than once a week.
After coupons, specific product searching, and favorite brands, location is the fourth most important factor enticing smartphone users to interact with ads. Location is far less important for tablet users who identify the sites they visited, apps they used, fun activities and daily routine as bigger factors than location when clicking on ads.
The “Mobile’s Role in the Consumer’s Media Day” report also examines in depth how receptiveness to advertising and media consumption varies by mobile operating system, gender, age, and time of day, among other factors. To trigger engagement and action, the report suggests that marketers keep in mind the differences in the ways consumers use these mobile devices and tailor their messages and strategies accordingly.
Dan Sodergren's mobile blog about mobile stuff 