Photo's from MWC 2009

Presenting in the Business Models of Mobile 2.0





Chilling with our buddies from Mob4Hire...

O2 Litmus Deck for Mobile World Congress 2009

Here is the deck I used during MWC 2009.

O2 Litmus Mobile World Congress 2009

View more presentations from James Parton. (tags: o2 litmus)

MWC Day 4

Well we made it to the end!

I spent the whole day at the WIP Jam, speaking on an "un" panel, and managed to get the last word in (!). I then co-chaired the testing round table with Paul from Mob4Hire and generally hung out and had a number of interesting conversations.

You can check out the Twitter chatter from the event here #wipjam

Here is a photo of the wrap up at the end of the day:



The general theme of the panel was fragmentation, technology choices, distribution and of course how to make money.

In terms of summarising my contribution, I'll start with my closing comments / rant.

One of the panelists said Operators need to reduce their revenue shares on premium sms to give the developers a break.

The developer community has a clear message /requirement - show me how to make money. To achieve this all parties in the value chain / ecosystem (insert buzzword here) need to be incentivized to invest.

This is the only way we can turn this into a sustainable business.

The panel included handset manufacturers, VC's, Operators, and software sitting in front of a room full of developers. Everyone in the room needs money. How then does a race to the bottom, cutting value out of a nascent industry, help any of us?

Marketing is not about giving stuff away for free. If you make a product people value they will pay you money for it. It's worked for thousands of years, so do we assume mobile app's won't work like that? What's special about this space? Am I missing something?

It's all about setting expectation.

If you position something as worthless today, it's so much harder to go back and then justify imposing charges later on. I've heard stories this week of developers giving away app's they believe have a value purley to drive visibility in the growing mess that is the Apple app store. "I have to because I need to stay in the top 5 so people can find me"

That's a crazy model right, and how does that answer the question show me how to make money?

I made the point a couple of times today that the mass market does not know what apps are. It's a small community of developers and early adopters (mostly iPhone owners we are led to believe, may be GetJar would disagree, they seem to be doing ok!!) that are creating all the buzz at the moment.

If we discount all the value out of the market today then you have set expectation for mass market adoption when it comes, if it comes. Again, how does that help you make money?

In a side conversation I likened it to Henry Ford giving away Ford Model T's free of charge before anyone had a driving license. Sure there was a risk that no one would trade in their horse for a car, and some one had to build roads, but stick in there, be clear on the value proposition and if people understand and recognise the value they will change their behaviour and pay you at the same time.

Kind of irrelevant if operators share 100%, 70%, 50%, 30% of revenue, if the price point is zero.

This leads me to the second theme I tried to explain. How many developers research their ideas and trial their products with real end users / customers, or is the model throw something against the wall and see if it sticks?

There seemed to be no real preference in the room, with many trying both. Surely in the current climate developers can not afford to speculate on what customers may want when they could learning what customers do want. Back to Henry, if you get this right, then you can charge a premium because there is an inherent value in what you are doing.

As the guy said at the last Mobile Mobile in London, "all of this is great, but tell me how I make money from Widgets and don't say advertising"

MWC Day 3

Ok these are getting shorter each day!

Quick post to summarise today.

I kicked off with a joint presentation between O2 Litmus and Oracle at the Oracle cafe. Seemed to be well received and had some insightful questions afterwards. Thanks for the opportunity Ty.



I then had meetings with Microsoft Silverlight, a great conversation with @sbisson and Mary Branscombe. Then catch up with an old friend James Patmore, and went onto meetings with Informa and Jouni Forsman & Joy Yang from Gartner.

Then had meetings with Facebook and a trip over the the Israeli trade area which was hectic, but looks like there is a lot of buzz and innovation coming out of there. Whilst there I bumped into Luc Jacobs who I know from way back in his Nokia days.

Anyways enough about me, I'm pooped and want to sleep...

Interesting stuff from today:

MEF launches 'Smart Pipe Enablers Initiative'

Gordon Ramsay now on iPhone - man is there no where I can escape the man, talk about over exposed...

iPhone game developer earns $600k a month

MWC: Amdocs launches 'app store' platform

MWC: Newbay's 16 million new year messages

I've probably missed some interesting stuff, but I'm done!!

WIP Jam all day tomorrow....

MWC Day 2

Kinda cheating by posting this early, but I doubt I'll be in front of a screen again tonight.

A little head down today. Spent some time on the Telefonica stand and met a few people including @paulwebster. I took a quick picture including the glamorous Carmelo sporting his pride and joy the O2 Litmus Polo ;-)



Had a great meeting with my Telefonica colleagues from Open Movilforum and I think we are going to see some kick ass developments by combining the best of both approaches to better serve the developer community.

I did an on camera piece with BBC Click we will see if I make the edit, I hear they are brutal on cutting down the material broadcast!

I then headed over to the Business of Mobile 2.0 Conference to speak and sit on a panel including Google, Yahoo, Goojet, Fortumo & Qualcom.

I stuck around to listen to the next session and glad I did as @tonyfish was great and thought provoking, making some great points about where the real value in the future sits.



Most of the big press releases came out yesterday but this caught my eye:

Qualcomm and Nokia kiss and hold handsets:
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/32667/MWC-Qualcomm-and-Nokia-kiss-and-hold-handsets

Yahoo Mobile Also Wants to Claim The “My Phone” Moniker.

Tech Layoffs Surge to 300,000

Startup news roundup

MWC Day 1

Notable news / announcements today:

Nokia to launch Ovi App Store:
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/32620/MWC-Nokia-unveils-Ovi-Store-app-store

O2 Litmus announces partnership with Mob4Hire:
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/32621/O2-customers-to-trial-Litmus-app-store

Nokia & Adobe offer $10m Flash Developer Fund:
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/32634/Adobe-and-Nokia-establish-10m-Flash-fund

Orange Extend App Store:
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/32661/MWC-Orange-extends-App-Shop-adds-widgets

Microsoft unveils Windows Marketplace for Mobile:
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/32658/MWC-Microsoft-unveils-Windows-Marketplace-for-Mobile

Most of today was travelling for me, but I managed to hot foot it across to the Mobile Monday Peer Awards, as O2 Litmus was proud to be one of the sponsors, held at the beautiful Palau Musica Catalana.

Basically each of the 68 MobileMonday Chapters (cities) select their local startup nominee which are filtered down to 20 finalists who present on stage in a 3 minute pitch.

The judging panel, seen below comprised of various industry experts including @unpocodetodo from Telefonica R&D.



The dreaded three minute countdown clock:



The winner "in spite of legal concerns" was Popcatcher who enable personal recording of songs from FM radio broadcasts for storage on the phone as MP3 tracks. On top of that their software also automatically edits out any advertising and DJ chatter. Impressive if it works and is legal!

For a good round up check out @mikebutcher summary here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/16/mobile-startups-whittled-down-to-the-last-five-in-barcelona/

Whilst the judging was taking place we all mingled in the bar and I got to catch up with the @mob4hire guys, the guys from Soonr, GetJar, amongst others. It was rough to hear from the Californian guys just how tough financing is at the moment, but the silver lining seems to be if you can make it through this, then your business really has great potential for the up turn.

I must invest in a Netbook so I can do this stuff from the event rather than going back to my hotel to fire up the laptop, still good excuse for a early night in preparation for a busy day.

Hopefully my good intentions to post each day will continue, if not apologies in advance, and follow me on twitter @jamesparton for more immediate thoughts / observations.

February Going's On...

Firstly thanks for stopping by. I've finally got a round to setting up a personal blog to try and aggragrate stuff I'm guest writing on other sites, and to provide a home to various personal ramblings and nuggets I pick up along the way.

For those of you that don't know me I'm the creative force behind O2 Litmus and as such I have spent the last 18 months talking to, and working with, some great people. Now we have the thing built and launched, 2009 is going to be busy spreading the word and helping the developer community make some money, good news huh? :-)

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona dominates the month, and O2 Litmus will have a visible presence down there, below is my upcoming schedule so it would be great to meet and chat...

February 2009:

2nd: Mobile Monday, London

16th - 19th: Mobile World Congress, O2 Litmus on Telefonica stand (Hall 8 stand 8B185)
16th: O2 Litmus sponsors Mobile Monday Peer Awards
17th: Speaking at the The Business of Mobile 2.0 Conference (14:40)
18th: Speaking at an Oracle Breakfast Briefing, RSVP by e-mail to anders.lundell@oracle.com
19th: O2 Litmus sponsors WIP Jam

26th: Oracle Webinar (details tbc)

March 2009:

5th: NavTeq Webinar

More soon...

And the winner of the most important API of 2009 is...

Orginally published at http://www.wipjam.com/ on 30th January 2009

We’ve asked our discussion leaders for WIPJam session to share their insight of the mobile developer world. This post was penned by James Parton, Head of O2 Litmus, the mobile developer programme with a twist and a sponsor of the WIP Jam Session at Mobile World Congress 2009 (#MWC09).

Open source, crowd sourcing, app stores, open networks, Web 2.0, Mobile 2.0, co-creation, user generated content. It’s clear that the future of application development is a hot industry topic.

Tip your hat to Apple. They have quickly transformed a cottage industry, struggling to find a poster child, into a serious business in a very short space of time. Through great end-to-end user experience – often overlooked by many in the area - we now have people buying apps on a regular basis. If you had asked those same people 6 months ago what kind of app they were interested in, they would have struggled to even define what an app was, let alone have a clear view on what was missing from their app life.

This wave has also beached in corporate boardrooms with many companies now launching or planning to launch app stores in reaction to the success of the Apple App Store. This leads us to ask where will the industry be in 6 months time?

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer for a second. They switch on their PCs and are be offered applications by their internet service provider. They then go to their favourite portal and may be offered applications, next they will see sponsored links for applications from their search engine.

Next they then pull their mobile phone out of their pocket and see an application store from their handset manufacturer, and sitting next that is the icon for their mobile network’s app store. Confused? Just imagine what the customer is thinking.

On the surface this explosion of app stores is a good thing for developers – more places to sell your apps means more people buying those apps, right?

However, this could be misleading. Many of these app stores are using aggregators to fill them up. This may lead to the vast majority of stores containing identical catalogues.

I can see parallels between the growing app market and digital music. Research has shown that over 90% of digital music catalogues are never downloaded. It’s an extreme example of Prato’s law. Are App stores already following the same path?

If these stores are filled by aggregators, and managed by marketers believing it’s all about catalogue, how do you as a developer get noticed? You want your app to be Smells Like Teen Spirit, and avoid being the obscure Cat Stevens B side from 1967 that no one wants!

So how do you solve this problem?

Customers. They are out there. They have an opinion. They are potential consumers of your products. You should get to know them, and love them. If you want to be successful, you have to prioritise customer relationship and service. Don’t just focus on the next feature you can build into your software.

Going back to my digital music analogy, we are going to see a huge attrition rate for apps. Thousands will never be downloaded or make profit. Can you afford to burn time and money speculating on what customers might want? Why not ask them before you commitment your engineering resource.

How do you find and reach these customers?

You should be seeking out partners that provide the most important API going forward. The winner of the most important API of 2009? It’s the Customer API.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if a large organisation was willing to step out of the way and let you interact directly with its customers? You would be able to demonstrate, co-develop and refine your product directly with end users?

This has to be a win – win approach. You save time and effort by refining your ideas before commercially launching, the end user feels empowered by helping to improve the products they and their friends will end up using, plus they get to experience these apps before anyone else – very different to a traditional retail environment where you buy and either love or hate the app you get.

Come and check us out here and upload your apps: http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/ or you can contact me directly via Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamesparton

Have you registered for WIPJAM yet. Rumour has it there are 2 tickets to give-away to the O2-Telefoncia party on Tues nite…