Views on the new media market

Mobile Application Stores - what's the true cost?

Amidst all the promotion of Mobile Application Stores the reality of the steps required to launch an application can be lost.

Yet these steps required to get an application out are very real to application developers - and consist of real costs and delays in bringing their application to market.

So what is the reality of launching an application once you've already developed it on the major mobile application stores?

I've recently launched an application on two major application stores - Live Talkback on the iPhone and iPod Touch and Live Talkback on Nokia S60 phones

In the case of both platforms it's possible to download and build an application as a developer for free by creating an account and downloading the SDK from Apple's Developer site and Forum Nokia respectively.

Once you've gone through the hard task of creating an application that you think people will like and use, then you need to get the appropriate pieces in place to submit your application to the store.

Apple's submission process

Apple's Developer Program starts with registering as a developer - this costs $99 for the standard program which is all you need to get applications out on the application store. As part of this process you need to authenticate your corporate details with apple - which involves faxing appropriate documents to them, so expect about a 2 week delay while the approval is completed. Apple have a great developer support line where you can speak to someone who can help through normal issues like this.

Once this is done you have the ability to sign applications - and you can create AppStore certificates, sign your application which is done from within the XCode build environment, and upload to iTunes Connect - the sumbission tool from Apple, and voila - with some screenshots and marketing copy your app is in the application store pipeline. Expect to wait around 10 working days for the app to be approved and go live.

Total effort? About 1 hour, with 2 websites to visit (the Apple iPhone Program Portal, and iTunes Connect), and total one off cost $99.

Ovi's submission process

Ovi publishing looks similarly easy, and cheaper, but there are some hidden extras underneath this.

To publish an application to an S60 device you need to have first built the application - easily done using the SDK from the Forum Nokia developer site. Once you have done this, you need to sign the application. This is done using the Symbian Signed program - which requires a separate registration.

Once you've done this you are presented with an array of options on signing at varying prices. The cheapest, and simplest is the "Express Signed" option - to use this you need to have an authenticated certificate. This can be obtained from TrustCenter and involves sending copies of corporate and personal details to their authentication center. Cost is $200 - expect a couple of days delay while the documents are checked, but staff at TrustCenter were very helpful in responding to enquiries and dealing with any problems or issues.

Once you have your Trust Center certificate you then need to extract the parts needed by the Symbian Signing process, which requires use of a commandline tool.

Once this is done then you can build a signed install package using a different commandline tool.

Now for express signing you can upload a package that includes this signed file, one of the files used to create the install file, and a README.TXT file - this wasn't clearly documented on the very complicated Symbian Signed site, so I uncovered this by getting repeated failures on submission.

You now need to buy some "credits" for signing - Express signing is the cheapest option at $20 per signing session - though this can quickly add up if you plan on doing iterative development and releasing minor version updates, or you have different versions for different device types - like I do, so the reality was that I needed to pay $100.

You now get to fill in some forms on the Symbian Signed site - these are a mixture of marketing information (though how exactly these will be published is unclear, and Symbian Signed seems to have no tracking of downloads or publishing statistics) and technical information that's used as part of the checks on signed applications to ensure that no inappropriate API access has been made - where there are multiple applications for different devices this means repeated entry of the same text.

Assuming you've done everything right here, you now have a signed, installable package that you can make available to anyone with an S60 phone to install - which could be directly from your own web site, or via a publisher.

This takes us to Ovi, where the application upload process is very similar to Apple's iTunes Connect - but with more complexity to deal with as you need to specify which of the myriad devices/platforms that Nokia support in market your particular application runs on.

Once this process is complete your application needs to pass Ovi's QA process, which in my case took 3 working days.

Total cost - $370, with a charge each time a new version is uploaded. Time taken - about 4 hours, with 3 different company websites to visit (and manage authentication and login) Symbian Signed, Ovi and TrustCenter.

Once you have a signed application on Symbian you can use this same application with multiple application stores, or offer your own direct download - so submitting my application to GetJar took just 20 minutes more, with no additional cost. However this multiple application store solution means that there are more different places to keep up to date with new versions, different promotion strategies, and fragmentation of the places that consumers go to to get applications.

Conclusion

Apple does have the cheapest, and simplest path to market for applications - and as they maintain a monopoly on the application distribution, also have an advantage of scale within their target market.

If Apple were to "fix" their approval process to be automated (retaining the ability to revoke applications that on subsequent review were found to be in breach of the Apple T&C's) then they would have a superb offering - indeed anyone creating an application store or platform would be well served to look at the "end to end" experience of developers launching applications.

The competition here for mobile app stores is really the web - by comparison a new release of the server components of Live Talkback require about 10 minutes of elapsed time, and go live about 5 minutes later, and require no approvals beyond our own Q&A. We could improve this cycle with more automated Q&A - but at the moment we are happy with the results we have here - they are certainly better than all of the mobile application stores!

Looking forward

I'll be tracking the actual downloads of the applications from the different stores over the next few months to see how different platforms fare, and who's application stores are the most effective at delivery of applications.

Nokbook arrives

My friends over in Finland have been working hard at implementing the suggestions from this blog it seems.

Back in June I predicted a Nokbook - well they have announced it - the Nokia Booklet

I await the pricing eagerly - if Nokia can leverage their relationships with both Intel, and more recently Microsoft to obtain a competitive advantage here then this could be a significant opportunity - particularly if they market it at the education market where Apple have historically been strong, but are suffering with price competition from the netbook market.

I look forward to Nokia releasing the products I proposed in this blog posting

Mobile Application stores vs Mobile Web apps

Mobile Application Stores are the latest essential accessory for a modern network operator or mobile platform provider.

Everyone has to be seen to either have an application store, or be seen to have an application store strategy. In all this flurry of activity around application stores the "old style" way of delivering content to mobile phones - the web page has been around for years, but without the hype or perceived success of the latest batch of App Stores

A question I'm asked sometimes is Which will win? Mobile Web or Mobile Applications? Now your definition of "win" may vary based on the metrics you are trying to achieve - but if we define win as has the greater share of overall revenue & profit (a draw would be smaller revenue, but greater profit) then in the long term I believe that Applications will win.

Why?

A common mistake in mobile is to assume that the key attribute of mobile phones is that the are mobile. The mistake here, as operators know, is that most of the time mobile phones are not actually mobile. Nielsen research in 2008 showed that over 50% of mobile internet usage was in the users own home. This mirrors the usage of mobiles for voice calls - where most calls are made from the user's own home, or workplace. Both locations where there is access to an existing landline phone.

So mobile is not about mobile - it's actually about convenience. It is more convenient to use your mobile phone to make a phone call as it has an integrated address book with people's phone numbers included. It's more convenient to use your mobile phone to access the internet than use your PC as you don't have to get off the sofa to walk to your PC.

So which is going to be more convenient a mobile web page, or a mobile application?

A mobile application has large advantages here - it can take over the full screen, it doesn't have to give space to "browser" controls, and can take advantage of local services like accelerometers, graphic acceleration and location. Historically mobile applications have suffered from being too hard to install, but the focus on usability in application stores that Apple are leading is leading to a rapid improvement in what usability of application stores.

So if you want to use a mobile phone to quickly check email, cricket scores, ebay listings, find out about inflation then an application is available - and is more convenient to use than a browser.

Today it's still hard to find out about applications for mobile phones - but as mobile applications become more successful, and more companies innovate in how to recommend, search and market them we will continue to see growth in the success of mobile applications - at the expense of the less convenient mobile web.

The strategic advantages that mobile applications have - of being local to the device, and being able to access local device features give them a long term advantage - the challenge is that the mobile application ecosystem is not yet as mature as the mobile web ecosystem, and far less mature than the desktop web ecosystem. There is a great opportunity for innovators bringing the successes from the web to mobile applications.

Consumers prefer closed, industry prefers open

Being "open" is very fashionable in technology circles at the moment. Whether you are creating an open platform, open source, or an open standard it's important to be seen as open.

Openness has proven very successful for industries in the past - if we look at the global success of GSM this couldn't have happened without an open standard enabling interoperability between products from different vendors. The open standard here has increased consumer choice and reduced cost to both consumers and the industry as a whole.

This pattern isn't always repeated though.

If we look at the global success of Apple's iPod - with over 70% of global MP3 player sales, and with the iTunes Music Store now accounting for over 25% of US music sales this very closed system has been voted a success by consumers - in spite of cheaper MP3 players and cheaper music stores, it seems a closed system can win.

Amazon is now repeating this model in the electronic book market with the Kindle an end-to-end solution consisting of hardware, software and retail experience for delivering books. In spite of the fact there is much lower cost competition from book retailers, in both paper based books and eBooks, the Kindle appears to be a growing success, even though it's only in one market to date.

What can we learn from these successes? The challenge that someone creating an end-to-end solution faces is that they have to think about every aspect of the consumer experience. It's no longer good enough to rely on "someone else" fulfilling billing, or discovery of content, or the delivery of the final goods - there is one clear owner, who carries the responsibility - and cost, of developing the experience, and reaps the rewards of success.

Getting an experience right is important - more important than scale. Those with long enough memories will recall that the iTunes Music Store in europe launched 2 full years after the initial iPod launch, much to the frustration of iPod customers in Europe. Amazon look set to repeat this structure with the Kindle.

At the end of July the BBC released it's latest consultation on the Canvas project - an approach by the BBC, and some commercial partners to set an end-to-end solution for the consumption of internet connected TV. It's interesting to explore their approach to control of the end to end experience - as set out in the diagram below

(extracted from Canvas supporting documentation)

The level of control that the Canvas team believe is needed is interesting - to quote section 2.5 of the same document

The Canvas partners believe it is essential that the proposed Canvas venture take a role in defining and managing a user experience (UX) to access content on any Canvas device. In order to repeat the success of Freeview the Canvas platform must attract a wide range of content providers and be adopted by a large number of people, two objectives which are mutually reinforcing. A consistent UX will be vital to ensure they are met for a number of reasons, Specifically:

1. Reducing barriers to entry for content and service providers, stimulating innovation and choice and democratising access to the television screen

2. Underpinning a consistent consumer brand to protect scale in the horizontal market for device manufacturers and advertisers

3. Ensuring the benefits of connected television are understood and enjoyed by all audiences

Control of the end-to-end user experience is key to ensuring the adoption of a new solution, and opening up of the possibilities of internet connected content on a TV - from On demand TV, to interactive content.

This approach puts the Canvas JV in an extremely powerful position in the UK TV market - as the value proposition of Canvas is easily communicated to consumers "Get BBC iPlayer content on your telly" it is likely to be a rapidly adopted success - with the result that the Canvas JV will have an ability to influence the direction, and consumer adoption of new interactive, IP delivered content in the UK.

Given the influence of the UK market on global TV viewing, and the unique ability of the BBC to fund creative, innovative concepts that use the Canvas platform it is likely that the success of Canvas will be repeated around the world - no wonder the BBC's commercial JV partners are keen to invest in the success of Canvas.

As a UK consumer I hope the Canvas project does come to market with a complete end-to-end vision - as while it may increase the cost of the content, it's also likely to increase the quality of what is achieved, and open new opportunities for content innovation.

Symbian Foundation tries another binary compatibility breaking experiment

Symbian Foundation is starting on a path to a brave experiment on the importance of a catalogue of applications in the mobile phone space.

The Symbian^4 release of the platform will break compatibility in a big way.

What does this mean?

Applications built for the 100m+ devices on Symbian before the ^4 release will cease to work, and developers will need to rewrite parts of their applications for new devices.

This is a brave experiment by the Symbian Foundation. While undoubtedly it will create open space to make great products by getting rid of legacy, it does level the playing field with other new entrants in the market. Symbian^4 devices will be a new platform, just as iPhone, Android, LiMo, Palm WebOS devices were when they first launched - so they better be great devices to attract developers.

Traditionally "consumer" platforms have been successful if they have maintained compatibility - Microsoft Windows is the iconic example of this, as each release software from the previous few releases - and with release cycles in 3-4 year windows, this means that 10 year old software continues to work. Other platform providers have learned from this - Apple provided an excellent compatibility story for consumers in moving from traditional MacOS to OS X and then from PowerPC to Intel architectures. Similar examples can be seen in gaming consoles from Sony (PlayStation) and Microsoft (XBox) and Nintendo (Gameboy -> Nintendo DS)

There are other examples where devices have chosen to break compatibility - and failed as they haven't attracted the software catalogue and consumers have chosen other devices as they cannot take advantage of their back catalogue of software. Sega's transition from the successful MegaDrive to the Sega Dreamcast was not successful for them.

Developer adoption is more mixed - developers will move to a new platform that provides them with sufficient advantages - the success of new product & platform introductions such as iPhone, Java demonstrate this. Once on the platform developers do expect a continued level of compatibility - developers don't value having to rewrite old code. Successful software platforms such as Java and Flash have understood this, and provide managed solutions to allow developers to reuse old code without changes - but when adding new code take advantage of new features.

There is one particularly pertinent piece of history here. Symbian has broken application compatibility once before.

In the transition from "EPOC" a PDA operating system that delivered high performance on 2 AA cells and a 18Mhz ARM7 core - Symbian moved to only supporting Unicode for mobile phones.

This meant that all software written for the old PDA products needed to be rewritten.

What happened then? The main licensee, and the originator of Symbian, Psion never made the transition to unicode products, and ultimately switched to producing Windows CE based products only.

So if history repeats itself with Symbian^4 with Nokia in the role of Psion, I would predict that future Nokia devices will be based on a non Symbian platform.

Of course there may be another lease of life for Symbian after Nokia - just as there was for Symbian after Psion.

A brave experiment indeed.

UK online video market gets a boost

The UK online video market has just received a boost - though from a surprising source. Microsoft. The service offers UK viewers a way to stream online video after the "7 day window" that UK broadcasters make their content available online via their on demand sites (the 7 day window is a length of time that was determined by consultation with the broadcasting regulators for UK public service broadcasters)

The surprise here is that this comes from a new aggregator - Microsoft - the service is MSN Video. Though industry watchers may have a sense of deja-vu - the value proposition from Microsoft is identical to that of "Project Kangaroo" a JV between the leading broadcasters to create an online, video streaming service for the UK. This isn't that big a surprise as the ex-CEO of Project Kangaroo (before the JV's opportunity was torpedoed by the competition commission) is Ashley Highfield - the ex-BBC Future Media & Technology director, and now the MD at MSN UK, responsible for... MSN Video.

The biggest surprise here is that the branded TV companies have not chosen to offer these services directly, but preferred to partner with a branded aggregator who will drive traffic.

Building an online video portal today is not that hard - the challenge of video streaming online is reasonably understood, and there are technology packages from Adobe (Flash Media Server) and Microsoft (Silverlight + WMV) that solve many of the tough problems.

So why have the branded broadcasters decided to allow their audiences to experience their content under the banner of a different brand?

This depends on your perspective on the value in new media - does the value lie in the content, or in the audience?

"Old media" traditionally focussed on the content as being where the value lies - create great content and there is opportunity to monetize it in multiple ways - syndicating the content, selling the back catalogue, and selling the format to new countries. This is the model that invests in journalists, production companies, and produces great, quality content.

"New media" focusses on the audience as being where the the value lies - the ultimate expression of this is Google - who's content is as simple as possible (text links) and comes from any source (Google don't commission web pages from anyone) but by providing a service that the audience (web surfers) value are able to monetize the content.

In the video market "old media" is still the strongest player - and consumers still place much value in the aggregator and commissioner of that content - under the old "channel" umbrella that is a legacy of the broadcast distribution of video.

As video explores new distribution mechanisms (iTunes, MSN Video, "On demand" catch up TV services) the value will shift from being associated with the content to being associated with the audience. Enabling consumers to consume video where and when they want will lead to growth, but also highlights an opportunity for the traditional broadcast market - a focus on monetizing your audience in new ways can generate new revenues - learn from the web and new media companies, and apply those techniques to the traditional TV market.

(Disclosure: my company Live Talkback is working on providing broadcasters with solutions to engage and monetize TV audiences using web technologies - if you are a UK TV producer or broadcaster get in touch with me)