Developer Economics 2011 released

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A quick plug for one of my work based projects I'm most proud of. Like any good marketer I spend a lot of time understanding the market and what my prospective customers want and need. Historically this investment in insight was proprietary and used solely internally. I had a "light bulb" moment about two and a half years ago and thought why don't we effectively open source our market research and share the same data we use internally with anyone that wants it. Next step was to find the right partner, and I have had a blast working with Andreas Constantinou and the team at Vision Mobile ever since. The 2010 edition of the report received wide spread praise and achieved over 10,000 downloads. I'm confident that 2011's edition is bigger, and better. We have doubled the number of respondents, and for the first time we have interviewed over 20 leading brands to understand their attitudes and apps strategies. You can listen to Andreas and I discussing the report here: Introducing Developer Economics 2011 from BlueVia on Vimeo. To download your free copy visit www.developereconomics.com Enjoy! edit: thanks to @adamcohenrose for pointing out the download link was broken! Now fixed
Tagged API's Market Insight Marketing Mobile Operators apps bluevia developers insight research vision mobile

A look back at some predictions for mobile services from 2000 (VIDEO)

Watching this video from Google left me impressed: For the first time, in one slick user experience, a company has combined previously siloed functionality to give you all you need in a simple all encompassing app:
  • Great mapping, now in 3D + street view
  • Location of you and your friends
  • Search
  • Places, reviews, information, ratings, calling
  • Directions and turn by turn navigation
It also triggered a long lost memory of some work I was involved in 10 years ago. As we are coming up to the end of the year and the traditional time of reflection, it feels like a good time to share this. Especially as 2010 closes my first decade in mobile data services. Even more impressive is I had hung onto the original CD (no DVD's back then!), AND it still worked when I popped it into the drive to rip! The video was created by the BT Cellnet Marketing team, back in 2000. BT Cellnet was the predecessor to O2, a leading European Mobile Operator, now part of the Telefonica group. The aim of the video was to try and capture how high speed mobile data services could change people’s lives. Some of it does look a little comical now, some 10 years down the line. That said some of it even now still remains pretty visionary. It’s easy to forget what 2000 was like; a world before broadband, smart phones and social networking. The UK 3G license auctions had taken place in the middle of the dot com bubble bursting, BT Cellnet itself had oversold WAP as “the mobile internet” with the infamous “Surf the BT Cellnet” ad campaign, and the most impressive device on the streets was the Nokia 7110, famously heavily promoted in the Matrix movie.
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Forget the luxury of the Android vs iPhone debate!! In the video you will see:
  • Very British accents!
  • Interesting device form factors. Fascinating that it was relativity 'easy' to forecast how software would develop, but massively underestimate where the hardware would be in 10 years time. I especially love the video phone at 1:41 which I have used as the title frame!
  • Voice interaction
  • Routing video to any screen, controlled from the mobile device
  • Interactive travel booking – flights and taxis
  • Video conferencing
  • Mapping
  • An interesting wheel based conceptual phone UI
  • Delivery of services to car / home / gaming devices
How a decade of working in mobile has flown by! I wonder what 2020 will look like?
Tagged 3G BT Cellnet Google Mobile Operators data services mobile mobile internet

So how should Telefonica pitch it's developer offer?

A couple of recent blog posts by @dalmaer have set me thinking. You can read them here, and here. I know Dion from the two joint O2 Litmus / Palm barcamps we ran, the last of which was in February. You can check a write up of that here. In those posts Dion explores the positioning of developer marketing, should it be advocacy or evangelism? It’s interesting that one of Dion’s ex managers at Google felt advocacy and evangelism added close to zero value. “If you build a great product developers will come” was his opinion. When I reflect on our position at Telefonica, we have some sizable perception issues and reputation challenges to overcome. Many question why we are even bothering with a developer program at all! Of course this isn’t just a Telefonica problem. All the Telco’s are tarred with the same brush. On the whole much of this suspicion is well founded, as Telco’s have a long history of aborted attempts to engage the developer community. Once bitten and all that…. Anyone that has heard me speak over recent months will know we are working hard on the re-launch of Telefonica’s Developer program. I hope we pass Dion’s tests with the new offer: 1)      A Business opportunity 2)      A chance to create something new with unique capabilities 3)      Make it fun and generative I’ll offer Dion the chance to tell us if it does! I did write a piece for Vision Mobile laying out some of areas where I genuinely believe a Telco can add value to developers, but of course the key word is execution. Talk is cheap, so for the Telco industry to begin to successfully address the perception issue, a Telco needs to demonstrate they can break the mould; both in terms of their attitude, and to innovate in the business models they offer to developers. So with this context, how should Telefonica pitch its approach the developer community? I’d love your to hear your thoughts, either here as comments on the blog, or drop me a line via Twitter or LinkedIn and I’ll trade you a free coffee for your thoughts ;-)
Tagged Marketing Mobile Operators Telefonica developers

MEF Publishes Smart Enablers Guide

I have referenced the work that the MEF has done on Smart Enablers a number of times in recent blog posts (here and here) and now MEF members can download the Smart Enablers guide direct from the MEF site, here. I'll also be trying to get some hard copies to hand out at upcoming Telefonica developer events.
Tagged API's Mobile Operators api developers enablers mef

Guest blog post for Vision Mobile

Just a heads up that today Vision Mobile posted a new guest blog from me, here's the abstract: [In the final part of our series on our latest research - Mobile Developer Economics 2010 and Beyond - Telefonica's James Parton discusses the challenges facing mobile network operators in their quest to stay relevant to mobile application developers. Full research report available for free download or see part 1, part 2 and part 3 of the blog series on mobile developer economics] You can read it here.
Tagged Mobile Operators developers guest blog vision mobile
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