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Category: General

By Payam Dastmalchi on July 15th, 2009

Location-Based Applications for Nokia

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One of the trends that we are noticing this year is the availability of more Location-Based Services (LBS) and applications. Using mobile devices, these applications leverage a users physical location to know where you/ and your friends are and use this data to provide enhanced services and experiences. We’ve also seen Internet giants such as Google enter into this market with Google Latitude and help fuel innovation across the board.

Luckily Nokia’s S60 and Series 40 platform includes a wide range of features to help developers and content producers make rich LBS applications and services. In this post, I am going to profile several of these apps that are available to download from the Ovi store.

Nulaz:

Nulaz mission is clear: “What is happening around you”- With Nulaz you can see where your friends are, share locations, and view local info. Nulaz also enables you to share this information with other social network (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc).


Buzzd:

This is another location based social network and city guide that keeps track of local information in real time and helps you connect with people, events and places around you.

PhoneLocator:

PhoneLocator native S60 realtime GPS tracking application for Nokia S60 phones. It allows you to view the location of your phone and a trail of where it has been using this website.

Near Here:

For $2.99, you can download this City Guide app that helps you search for pretty much anything around you. With Near Here you can find practical places, your current location and save them in your phone memory for future.

Trackut:

Trackout is a free location based streaming service that enables users to create location oriented groups, network with friends and share location tagged data.

Looking at other mobile app platforms Ovi store has a lot more grounds to cover when it comes to LBS but this is one area that Nokia is very familiar with. Remember they made an acqusition of Berlin based Plazes last year which has evolved into Nokia Maps. With Plazes and other recent acquisitions (Twango, Loudeye, etc) Nokia is in a great position to connect people through location-based services, maps, music communities and gaming services.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 14th, 2009

Why American consumers don’t like Nokia phones

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There has been a lot of speculation in recent weeks about the future of Nokia phones and Symbian OS. Many insiders believe that Nokia has missed number of trends in the last few years and it will be hard for them to catch up. A recent study done by Generator Research suggests that iPhone could surpass Nokia as the smart phone leader by 2013. The report predicts that Nokia will see its market share cut in half to just 20 percent by 2013 and names the rapid increase of the applications available for iPhone and price drop of 3G model to $99 as primary reasons for this.

This morning Wired magazine also published an article about why American consumers stay away from Nokia phones. This report is particularly interesting to me because in my previous job, I worked for one of the largest Mobile carriers in the US and I was part of Nokia’s “Retail Evangelist” team and we used to sit in focus groups and talk about this very specific issue and how Nokia can improve its market share in the US.

The article lists 7 items:

  1. Weak Brand and the fact that Nokia has stayed low key in their marketing efforts to compete with rivals.
  2. Lack of focus on CDMA handsets – believe it or not, many people in the US still use CDMA networks.
  3. Poor execution when launching the Ovi store or other high end phones.
  4. Lack of carrier relationships to subsidize handsets and put them in consumers hand.
  5. Unusual handset design- The article talks about the “American Standards of Beauty” which essentially means design values doesn’t matter in the US and consumers want something thin.
  6. Symbian OS.
  7. Lack of decent apps in the Ovi store.

Thinking back about my Nokia focus groups, this list is pretty legit and I think majority of consumers will agree that if Nokia plans to rival Apple or Palm then they have a bigger task of changing their overall culture and focusing on what matters the most to handset owners in the US.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 12th, 2009

Oviapplications Weekend Hits 7.12.09

  • Ovi store reports now available for publishers. This is great news for publishers as they can use these revenue reports to adjust their market strategies. [tamss60]
  • The Ovi store is now available in three new languages. Also look for the Chinese version coming at the end of this year. [Nokia Conversations]
  • Nokia will publish its second quarter earnings report on July 16. Many analysts believe the handset maker will see a decline in revenues and number of units sold. [istockAnalyst]
  • 1 out of every 3 phones to have accelerometers next year. This should make developers and gaming companies happy since it will make their content more fun and realistic. [iSuppli]
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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 11th, 2009

Application Category Distribution

If you know me in real life then you know that I am a numbers type of guy and I love to play around with pie charts and excel spreadsheets and create metrics. So one of the things that I would like to do moving forward is to create store metrics and add interesting stats about the Ovi store. This is not an easy task considering that Nokia does not release any store figure regularly but I have some ideas about how to generate these reports and we will see if I can pull it off in the coming days. If there are some metrics that you would like to see, let me know and I will see if I can get them.

For now the only information that I can gather from the store is the application category distribution. Below is a chart of all the top level categories according to Nokia ( Applications, Games, Audio & Video and Personalisation) and the number of applications currently active in each. If this chart is any indication, there is a huge opportunity for developers to create apps in business, music and sports related categories.

NOTE: The Ovi web portal only shows the apps specific to your handset so therefore this chart was created for all apps available for Nokia N97. I also did not include the sub-categories ( total of 10 ) for Games category.

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This chart will be updated on monthly basis.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 02nd, 2009

Ovi download stats after a month

I just came across some interesting facts about the Nokia Ovi store and download stats. According to an article released by Rethink-Wireless, 60% of Nokia device owners have downloaded content from the shop after a month of being live.

  • 31% of users have downloaded between two or five apps and 6% has downloaded more than ten pieces of contents. (I’ve personally download 15 paid apps, and 7 apps were giving to me by developers for review purposes)
  • 36% of Nokia handset owners have yet to download any apps from the store. (Shocker! Is it the lack of available apps or marketing? what do you think)
  • 5% don’t even know about what the Ovi store is. (Ouch, Marketing people’s nightmare.)
  • The store was started by just over 1,000 apps but they are now approving 100 apps a day and have just passed 2,000 apps. (Great news, the common theme that I keep hearing from developers is that, their approval process with Nokia was much more pleasant than Apple experience)

The article also talks about the upcoming Microsoft app store that will debut later this year in 29 countries. Microsoft will start accepting applications in August.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 01st, 2009

Contest: 5 Complete Premium “Fissure” Packs to win!

This contest is now closed and winners have been notified. Thanks to all who participated. Although it was our first time running a contest on Twitter but I was very happy with the results and will definitely have more similar contest in the coming days. We are just getting started :)

As we are coming towards the end of our first month at oviapplications and as a “Thank You” to everyone who have visited and participated in discussions and supported me in my mission to create a directory services of application reviews from the Nokia Ovi store, I am pleased to announce our first contest.

Last week, I wrote about a new Premium Theme “Fissure” available from Tehk7. In his own words, “This theme is a dark theme with various shades of angled rectangular shapes that play with the concept of depth of dimension of the background wallpaper. This piece of work is the most detailed theme I have ever done.” I’ve had the theme installed on my 5800 and in all honestly, it is the the clearest and one of the most elegant themes I’ve ever seen.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on June 29th, 2009

Interview with Mans Adler, Founder of Bambuser

bambuser

Last week, I wrote about Mobile Video Streaming industry and the fact that many start-ups are after this niche and revolutionizing the way mobile media has traditionally worked. One of these companies is Bambuser based out of Sweden. The company was announced as one of the most innovative Internet companies in Sweden and Mans Adler, Founder has been named as 2008 top Internet entrepreneur in the country by the “Internet World” magazine. The company is also nominated for Tech Crunch’s Best Mobile Start up award in Europe. Mans was kind enough to provide oviapplications with firm and well-focused answers to questions I posed to him recently. He can be reached at via email adler [at] bambuser.com or on Twitter.com/Manster.

First, tell me a bit about your company. How long have you been in business? How did you get started in it?

Bambuser was funded back in early 2007, November the same year we launched our service bambuser.com and was first to bring live video from mobile phone to flash on the web.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on June 27th, 2009

Nokia to launch Chinese-version of Ovi store by the end of 2009

According to Nokia sources in China, the handset manufacture plans to launch a Chinese version of the Ovi store in the China market by the end of this year.

This is all part of Nokia’s efforts to grow its market share in China. Currently there over 180 million Nokia handset owners in China and Nokia foresees stronger demand for access to Internet services through mobile phones. Out of 700 million mobile subscribers in China, there are only 350 million mobile Internet users but many analysts believe that due to recent implementations of 3G and WLAN hotspot networks, this number is expected to increase by additional 150 million over the next two years and Nokia sees Ovi store as the marketing force to grab a greater share of the mobile Internet subscribers in China.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on June 24th, 2009

“Fissure” Premium Theme Available for Sale Tomorrow

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If you’ve been following Tehk on his twitter stream, you probably know that he has been hard at work designing a new premium theme for S60 3rd and 5th edition devices entitled “Fissure”. According to Tehk, because of the overall design and dimensions of the background wallpaper, this theme happens to be one of the most detailed designs that he has worked on.

The theme which will be available for sale starting tomorrow is priced very reasonably at 1 Euro per download for the standard icon versions and 2 Euro per download for the coveted seven icon theme.

To learn more about the theme and purchase, please visit Tehk7 and make sure to follow him on twitter to learn more about his upcoming works.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on June 22nd, 2009

Interview with Brian Mac of Mobile Nordic AS

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SMSpreview is a useful SMS tool that improves the way you view messages in your inbox and was featured as one of our the top 10 free apps when the Ovi store initially launched . The company behind this free app, Mobile Nordic AS just won the 2009 GSMSA Mobile Innovation Award for Best Mobile Consumer Application with 118 Mobile, a real world directory look up service. For this interview, I corresponded with Brian Mac, Marketing Campaign Manager at Mobile Nordic.

1. First, tell me a bit about your company. How many apps do you have for Symbian devices? How long have you been in business?

So I joined Mobile Nordic AS about 7 months ago but they have been around for about 2 years now with their first Symbian application 118 Mobile. It all started when Rudi Rørstad one of the founders was laying in bed asleep when he got a call at 4am in the morning from an unknown number. He tried to call them back but no answer then spent the rest of the night frustrated and restless trying to figure out who it could have been. The next day he called Inge Andre Sandvik, a friend of a friend in the mobile industry, and was said there has to be a way to See who is calling with one single click?? From there 118 Mobile and Mobile Nordic was born, now the application is available in 5 countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Germany. We are looking to have it up on the Nokia Ovi Store soon and launch in a few more markets this year. SMS Preview is the company’s second application and was decided to be given away for free to help users get more out of their mobile experience. The company is all about helping the world say “Hallo” (Hello in Norwegian) in anyway it can.

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