Dear Readers,
thanks to a total power grid failure by NS HighSpeed, my train which was scheduled to arrive in Amsterdam at 9h25 has arrived only at like 13h00.
But, I am here now:
DevCon Europe Reporting starts soon – visit our sister site TamsBlackBerry to find out more:
http://tamsblackberry.tamoggemon.com
When it comes to mobile advertising, it is now difficult to find an ad-free free app on platforms like Android and iOS. For many, this seems to compensate at least somewhat for the loss of sales in “classic” business models.
As for the ad market overall, the folks from the advertising firm inneractive have just sent us the following, pretty interesting diagram:
What do you think?
In the good old days of the Palm OS, the main issue faced by Palm was the odd resultion: a base resolution of 160×160 made scaling to more “common” resolutions was difficult.
Apple has had a similar problem with its 480×320 resolution, but managed to follow it up. Samsung is now at 800×480, and the question is what will follow next (and what is technically possible).
A PR company has now sent me the following:
MicroOLED, a maker of highly power-efficient superior image quality microdisplays for near-to-eye applications, today introduced a new 5.4 million pixel density 0.61 inch diagonal, low power consumption OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Display) microdisplay on silicon for applications demanding high picture quality, such as professional camera and camcorder equipment, night vision systems and head-mounted displays used in surgery.
The ultra-compact 5.4 million-pixel microdisplay with a sub-pixel pitch of 4.7 micrometres by 4.7 micrometres is the highest pixel density OLED microdisplay available today. By doubling the pixel density of comparable products, MicroOLED has eliminated the gap between pixels. With no black matrix present, the resulting image resolution is of the highest quality. This makes the 5.4 million-pixel 0.61 inch diagonal microdisplay most suitable for defense, medical and professional camera applications that demand sharp images with very smooth transitional tones.
As of this writing, no data on availability is given – but it looks like the resolution war can continue!
An article from Forbes – inaccurately titled How China Ate Android – is currently making circles all over Nokia employee’s Twitter streams.
It contains the following passage, which is highlighted by the Nokia folks:
How is it possible the mid-tier Android vendors cannot eke out revenue growth with that kind of global Android unit explosion still going on?
The most likely explanation is the rapid expansion of the low-cost Android phone vendors, particularly ZTE and Huawei. I
Sadly, they fail to read on – as it contains the following passage, also:
… they are also eyeing other device segments. ZTE’s Windows model Tania is debuting in the UK at the monthly contract rate of 10 pounds – half of what the Nokia 710 will cost.
If you ask me, Nokia would have fared best with a proper version of Symbian – with Android being the second best. The reason for this has been outlined here before: while Windows Phone 7 is a nice platform, it is, by design, unsuitable for creating high end phones.
However, all the eeking and squeaking mainly takes place in the mid-range area. High-end Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note have little to fear from Chinese manufactutrers – they prefer the cushier mid- and low-range markets to the cold winds faced in the profitable, but challenging high-end market.
Let’s quote Winston Churchill: “I am not a person to be prodded. If anything, I am the prod”.
Sadly, Nokia has all but given up that position. So, better invest in impact dampers – and get aquainted to that prod…
Samsung has shown an extraordinary amount of diligence when it comes to keeping its SDK up to date – version 2.0.4 has just been released.
In particular, the following has been changed and improved:
This release contains the following resolved issues.
IDE and SDK
IDE
The Stop JavaScript Debugging menu in the JavaScript Debugger does not work properly. When the user clicks this menu, the application exits.
SDK
If the Event Injector sends the ‘USB Remove’ event, the current debugging application is terminated.C++ Framework
Osp::Ads::Controls
The Ad library (libOspAdsControls.so.2.0.3) has a packaging error, which means that the application packages with the Ad library cannot be run by the Test Kit or registered properly in the Samsung Apps Seller Office.
Osp::App
The launch condition registered with the RegisterAppLaunch() method does not fire correctly.
Osp::Locations
Location updates are generated even in the sleep mode.
Osp::Social
Editing a contact through the contact AppControl does not work properly when a contact ID and URL are used as parameters.
The SnsAuthenticator class does not work correctly for bada applications newly registered as Facebook Applications.
Osp::System
The application is automatically registered in the location menu, when it subscribes to setting events.
Osp::Ui
The text color and background color of the tab style footer does not change.
The SetTextAlignment() method of the TextBox, EditField, EditArea, and ExpandableEditArea classes does not work as expected.
If the user-specified color is partially or fully transparent, the color-related methods of all UI controls do not work as expected on WQVGA devices.
If the renderer size and the size of the OverlayRegion instance do not match, a pinkish outline is shown on WQVGA devices.
The translucent properties of the Form indicator, header, and footer do not work as expected on WQVGA UI Builder.Web Framework
General
Auto-selection of the privileged API group in the config.xml file does not work properly on the bada developer site.
Not much to add here – except that, for me, the Auto-Update feature of the bada IDE did not work, requiring a manual update…
Dear Readers,
I am unhappy to inform you that we have had a minor break-in into our systems – an attacker of unknown provinience exploited the software used to host the Tamoggemon Content Network, as to insert content to “spam” the Google search engine with ads for his own products.
As this was a purely Google-targeted attack, no post data was damaged and no user data was stolen. We have been able to remove the hack fully from all sites already.
This disclosure is made only to satisfy our legal obligations. The following sites were affected:
Should you recognize any oddities, please let us know immediately!
With best regards
Tam Hanna / Jatinder Singh
This one goes out to all true Tam Hanna fans who happen to be in Germany in February – you can meet yours truly at the Mobile Developer Conference.
I will be speaking about data persistance on Windows Phone 7 – and most definitely, attendants can expect a few surprises!
Find out more via the URL below:
http://www.mobile-developer-conference.de/
When it comes to Samsung, most other mobile companies do not get the motives of this firm. Still today, I can hardly restrain my laughter when thinking about how Nokia accused Eldar Murtazin about “being sponsored by Samsung” – bollocks, the company just happens to be everywhere.
The BBC now reports the following:
Samsung Electronics has agreed to buy out Sony’s entire stake in their liquid crystal display (LCD) joint venture.
The Korean electronics maker said it will pay Sony 1.08tn won ($939m; £600m) in cash for its stake.
The move comes as Sony has been restructuring its TV business, which has been making a loss for the past seven years.
…
This report nicely fits into the Samsung picture – it is a little-known fact that the company offers, among other things, building services. In fact, the picture to the left of this story shows the Petronas Towers…which were, incidentally, built by Samsung.
Samsung’s management takes an extreme long-term view on many industries. For them, an investment makes sense even if it takes 10 years to pay off – especially if it gives you control over the competition. Let’s take a look at that.
If we look at past reviews, Samsungs products consistently stand out due to the extraordinarily high display quality. Furthermore, the devices tend to be very affordable – the launch price of the first-generation Wave (bada phone) can almost be called dumping.
All of this is made possible by a very unorthodox trend: anti-outsourcing! If you make the stuff other manufacturers have to buy, it gives you more leeway – selling an LCD to yourself at production costs is an entirely sensible decision as long as the end product makes money.
Of all firms in Mobile, no one has perfected this approach to the extent Samsung has – what do you think?
Image: Wikimedia Commons / SomeFormOfHuman
I have always thought that there is no correlation between screen diagonals and click through rates – what impact should the screen size have on user behavior?
InnerActive has now sent us the following diagram, which shows a clear correlation:
Any ideas?
bada 2.0 is a competitive operating system – its feature set is now more or less on level with Symbian and Android.
Version 2.0.3 of the SDK now implements the following new features:
● Support of the official WQVGA resolution
The WQVGA resolution was supported as a beta version in SDK 2.0.2, and it is now supported as an
official resolution in 2.0.3. The official resolutions supported in version 2.0.3 are WVGA, HVGA, and WQVGA.● Additional language support for voice functions (TTS, STT)
Korean and Chinese are supported in addition to the previous 5 languages (English, French, Italian,
German, and Spanish).
– Korean: This language has been added to the SDK. Only the Wave 3 (for all countries) device is supported.
– Simplified Chinese: This language has been added to the SDK.
Simplified Chinese is only supported for devices for the Chinese market.● Support for the Test Kit
The bada Test Kit application on the target device allows you to install multiple applications on the device.
Additionally, the Test Kit supports remote application installation, allowing other developers to test
your application. The Test Kit will be published on Samsung Apps.
For more information, see Test Kit.● Addition of the bada RSS builder
The bada RSS builder template has been added for RSS applications.
It enables developers to develop RSS applications more easily.● Debug library for target devices
The debug library for target devices is distributed with some updates. With this updated version,
you can use the step-into option while debugging applications on a target device, and the issue
where variables were not read properly has been resolved. For more information, see Debug Library.● Function improvements and error corrections
– Some errors in the Potential Bug Checker have been corrected and the performance has been improved.
– The Ad library has been enhanced by removing limitations of the previous library.● Some classes (regarding APIs and event listeners) have been deprecated:
Osp::Social::Services::BuddyService
Osp::Social::Services::PrivacyManager
Osp::Social::Services::ProfileService
Osp::Locations::RemoteLocationProvider
Osp::Locations::RemoteLandmarkStore
The full release notes can be found at the URL below:
http://static.bada.com/releasenotes/2.0.3.html
Rumors about non-payment of developers my MobiHand’s have made circles in the BlackBerry market for some time – reminding veterans of the Palm ESD which also almost went belly-up and repaid the developers over a few years.
A recent CrackBerry forum post purpoted to be coming from MobiHand now reads as following – emphasis added by yours truly
To help you folks avoid further misunderstanding on a couple of issues, here is some information about recent topics we’ve seen discussed on these forums. First, MobiHand continues to provide customer service in the same manner as in past. In the few cases of activation code problems that have actually been referred to us, the cause has been the removal, by the applicable developer, of the linkage between our systems and the developer’s systems, which is needed to generate codes based on the application’s DRM model. We encourage developers to continue to provide service and enable us to provide service to our mutual customers. We are late on some payments, but we are working to resolve that and it is not appropriate or helpful to the situation for any of us to hurt or scare our customers.
Another issue recently raised has been “refunds” recorded on the system over the last few days. Almost all of these are not voluntary refunds to customers. These are “chargebacks” (forced refunds) imposed by the credit card companies when the original purchase was made by a user not authorized to use the credit card. Unfortunately, these fraud events are common in online commerce, especially for sales of items that don’t need to be shipped to a real physical address. We use several techniques to detect and reject many fraud orders, but some get through undetected. We historically experience fraud rates lower than industry averages and much less than 1% of sales. The experience rates for different products often vary as the fraudsters sometimes seem to target specific products. These chargebacks come from the credit card companies day by day, normally several weeks or months after the original sale (after the cardholders have examined their credit card statements) and we normally record them in big batches. The items recorded in the last few days represent an accumulation of chargebacks over about two months. We are simply completing the accounting after not recording them for some time.
We ask developers in this forum to understand that MobiHand continues to work hard to provide services, get all of you paid and generate growing revenues. If something is not perfect, please do not interpret it to mean that we have given up or do not intend to get it right. Most developers with questions and concerns have addressed them directly to us in a businesslike manner, using the help tool inside their MobiHand account, and most concerns are resolved to their satisfaction with the one exception being late payments. We appreciate that most developers are not using payment delays as a reason to create more problems by inconveniencing customers or encouraging panic by the developer community. You should also know that MobiHand is not some giant corporate monster — it is a small technology company with real people who have provided outstanding service to customers, developers and website stores for seven years. As usual, businesses go through easy times and difficult times and the only way we know to get through difficulties is to continue to work. MobiHand is continuing to provide services and intends to pay every single dollar owed to every single developer and we have several initiatives underway that we believe will enable that.
Finally, please understand that we don’t read these forums everyday, we don’t intend to become regular participants and, if we are silent about issues, it is not because we don’t care. We are simply focused on running our business. Instead of engaging in debates, we are trying to serve the developer community and our mutual customers.
Thanks.
As of this writing, not much more is known…
P.S. To clarify some accusations levied against Tamoggemon Limited by a hysteric developer who will remain unnamed: we have not made any revenue off MobiHand for ages. We stand in no commercial relationship to MobiHand whatsoever.
When it comes to deciding which countries to target during localization, knowing more about the habits of the inhabitants of the land is very useful.
The folks from ComScore now bring us the following table:
| Total Internet | |||
| Total Unique Visitors (000) | Average Hours per Visitor | Average Pages per Visitor | |
| World-Wide | 1,431,939 | 24.6 | 2,402 |
| Europe | 376,644 | 27.8 | 3,013 |
| Russian Federation | 51,641 | 24.4 | 2,664 |
| Germany | 50,704 | 25.4 | 2,967 |
| France | 42,520 | 28.3 | 2,957 |
| United Kingdom | 37,404 | 37.5 | 3,510 |
| Italy | 23,986 | 19.1 | 2,132 |
| Turkey | 23,234 | 33.4 | 4,017 |
| Spain | 21,382 | 28.3 | 2,475 |
| Poland | 18,193 | 26.7 | 3,189 |
| Netherlands | 11,987 | 35.5 | 3,562 |
| Sweden | 6,219 | 26.5 | 2,761 |
| Belgium | 6,047 | 20.4 | 2,282 |
| Switzerland | 4,764 | 19.5 | 2,121 |
| Austria | 4,733 | 15.0 | 1,720 |
| Portugal | 4,263 | 21.6 | 2,240 |
| Denmark | 3,676 | 23.5 | 2,483 |
| Finland | 3,381 | 26.2 | 2,633 |
| Norway | 3,264 | 29.2 | 2,703 |
| Ireland | 2,349 | 21.4 | 2,139 |
Not much to add here…
In the past, our business applications have fared extraordinarily well in India – Nokia is a large brand there, and business apps are extremely popular in this market.
Mobile Business Briefing now has the following bit of advice courtesy of Reliance:
…combined circulations of all of the English-language newspapers does not approach that of the single most popular local-language title,…
Feel like localizing? Let us know!
Being an ESD in the current time is difficult – with Apple, Samsung et al all having their own app stores, even traditional ESDs like MobiHand are now in more and more financial trouble.
ResearchToGuidance has now sent us the following chart looking at the future of ESDs:
In addition, it looks like Hutchison once again took the role of market leader with its operator store:
Broadly speaking, there are 3 types of niche stores:
Platform-oriented: Provides apps for a special OS platform e.g. AndroidPIT, Crackberry.
Target group-oriented: Provides apps for a specific segment of app users e.g. business or adults.
Carve outs: Niche store with a full catalogue store e.g. MNOs having their own app store within the Android Market Place or “@work” by Apple.The growth of niche app stores – particular target group-oriented stores – has been partially fueled by back-end service providers. These service providers enable white label app stores for any company which would like to run its own app store and monetize, for example, the website’s traffic.
What do you think?
Looks like the times of CarrierIQ winning awards from agencies like FierceWireless will soon be over – now, the image of the Android OS itself is at stake.
The image below came from the main news broadcast of Austrias governmental TV Station ORF, and was followed up with a tirade stating that “mainly Android handsets are affected”:
Even though the ranting of a governmental TV station can be ignored, the situation is now getting hot: as the US government investigates and RIM distances itself from the product, it most probably is but a question of time until we will see a situation similar to the Etisalat removal patch offered by RIM some time ago.
By the way: the software is not at all limited to Android. It also lives on Symbian, iOS and webOS, with Windows Mobile classic deployments rumored.
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