BEST & BRIGHTEST: COM #228: App Store Hype; Android UI Control & Bad Mobile Advertising » mobilegroove

In brief: The Carnival is up (again) at MSG with a selection of solid posts that ask some tough questions. Topics include: The math that spells trouble for app developers; the issues handset makers face as they strive for differentiation on Android; connecting the dots in recent carrier comments;  bad mobile advertising that should have us thinking; and good mobile outreach that raises awareness about prostrate cancer.

I’m pleased that my calls for posts and hosts via Twitter (@COTMobilists) have encouraged new activity and interest in the Carnival. This is reflected in the number of submissions I received this week and the offers from Mobilists to take the helm and host the COM. Thanks to Steve Litchfield over at allaboutsymbian.com, who will host later in July. There are more slots open, so check out the calendar and pick your date to host soonest.

This week’s line-up:

Tam Hanna conducts an interview with Resco, a Slovakian company sharply focused on Windows Mobile 7. What’s the view of WM7? What is the likely take-up among enterprise users? Is the timing of the release good for business (literally)? Lots of key questions, so read on and find out.

Tomi Ahonen provides us a masterpiece of math and logic. His post recounts the key stats we need to know to understand just how much money the Apple App store has made and argues that the numbers spell disaster for developers who hope to make real money selling their apps. As he puts it: “I have been claiming now for many months that the App Store hysteria is developing into a tech bubble, and that most developers will never recover their costs.” It’s a well-researched post that starts off as a typical Tomi rant, but evolves to offer us some hard-nosed business advice. It also earns my vote for Best Blog Of The Week. More on the numbers and the reasoning behind Tomi’s dead-serious warning to mobile companies and investors in our monthly MSG podcast next week.

We know Tomi doesn’t buy the apps hype. But what about Web shortcuts? Steve Litchfield over at allaboutsymbian.com points out that booksmarks may be the best way to get Web content on your smartphone. What’s more, since many servers auto-detecting a mobile phone OS and adapting their content automatically, bookmarks are a sure-fire way to “bypass a lot of typical high profile ‘apps’ entirely.” Steve wraps this up with a road test of some popular apps (app vs Web bookmark and complete with screenshots) and assess the user experience. So, do we really need app stores to get a lot of the content we love? Read on and find out…

Kudos to Stasys Bielinis over at UnwiredView.com for his keen observations and conclusions from the Droid X launch. What has happened to Motorola’s Android smartphone strategy? Where is the MotoBlur interface now? And how can handset makers differentiate on the platform? Could it be that Google has learned to innovate at Internet speed? Will handset companies ever catch up? Read on and find out…

Taking a similar stance, Sachendra Yadav tracks the evolution of the Android operating system as it takes up the charge to beat back Apple. Consolidating and defining the UI layers in the Android OS is the best solution. But how will handset makers differentiate? Will it be through media features and social networking? Sachendra is hardly convinced…

Keeping with the focus on developers, Steven Hoober over at Little Spring Designs blog walks us through a detailed discussion focused (no pun intended!) on images, resolutions and new approaches that get good images to display even better on a mobile screen.

Helpful advice of a different kind comes from Terence Eden. His blog post provides us a textbook example of bad mobile advertising (badvertising) using the example of an Apple app advert shown on an Android device. A complete mismatch and a bad user experience via the Guardian – or, more likely, whoever runs their advertising department. But it gets worse – a lot worse. How could this badvertising disaster involving the Guardian, Barclays Bank and Apple have been avoided? Terence has the answers…

In contrast, my submission from MSearchGroove offers a positive example of how charities can harness mobile for the greater good. A cancer awareness campaign gets our attention using barcodes and calls-to-action that make sense (and a difference!)

Volker Hirsch over at Volker on Mobile connects the dots in recent comments by carrier representative to conclude that the classic 50/50 rev share model may be on the way out. Will it be replaced by a 70/30 rev share model that favors developers? No clear answers, but Vodafone’s content Services Director hinted at last week’s MEM event in London that it beginning to see things differently. Will operators embrace Volker’s logic and understand that “the real value of (great) content to carriers may not lie in incremental revenues (be it 50% or 30%) but in softer albeit much, much more important values, namely marketing, positioning as well as customer retention.” Read on and find out…

And finally, an emotional plea from Antoine RJ Wright for change in the U.S. mobile market. It may not be everyone’s taste in posts, but there’s no arguing that many customer feel locked in a market that is high on carrier control and low on carrier innovation…

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That’s a wrap for this week. Next week we converge on Communities Dominate Brands where Tomi will summarize the best of the week’s mobile blogging.

In the meantime, I encourage EVERYONE to get involved and submit a post. Better yet – recruit your buddies to join in as well. I still miss posts from bloggers in the emerging world where I know the REAL innovation is happening…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Carnival Of The Mobilists, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Research, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.