Making Mobility More Attractive
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
Telco mobile networks are toast without good content
It is always encouraging to make some progress forward in a new business, so it was pleasing to round off the week by signing an agreement with a development partner to work on our much anticipated iPhone application. What would be even more encouraging is if the telcos stimulated growth in the mobile application industry.
ideegeo is collaborating with coravy. Limited, an Apple approved iPhone developer. They will provide us with a stylish mobile interface and we will deliver the back end search functionality based on our underlying technology. It’s a win for both parties because we both get to extend our development skills and demonstrate capability. We’ll be sharing more about this as we achieve some milestones in the project. We have a mobile product pipeline planned, but should have version 1.0 available within a couple of months.
The telecommunications providers should be pleased that developers are thinking about next generation applications. With Telecom having taken years to make the decision to invest in WCDMA it was no surprise that it was found to be losing market share to Vodafone. Now that Telecom is planning to switch over to a 3G capable network by about November we will finally see some competition in the market place. The networking technology itself is moving ahead in leaps and bounds and as capacity ramps up prices must drop. More attractive pricing plus lots of cool apps should ensure that mobile computing will finally hit the mainstream in New Zealand and globally.
What is still unclear is why the telcos rarely talk to independent developers. It’s all very fine investing in mobile network infrastructure, but if there is no product who is going to use it? Telcos have traditionally not been successful at developing their own content offerings, whereas small niche developers have been. The telcos want to retain and grow their user base, so why not encourage mobile application development as an industry? Where are the telco sponsored developer forums, competitions for best mobile app and the investments into intrapreneurial spinoff ventures? Surely we can do a bit better than PacMan and mobile Bridezilla?