Yearly Archives: 2010

Why Infinity Softworks Focuses on iPhone

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We receive a number of requests each week regarding powerOne software calculators on different platforms or different devices that we don’t support yet. We love these, by the way, so keep them coming as it helps us prioritize when it comes to new work.

We currently have product for iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry (non-touchscreen devices), Windows Mobile (touchscreen devices), and Palm OS. The Palm OS version runs on webOS devices if you purchase Classic emulator. And the iPhone version will run on iPad, although we have already started working on a native version.

There are some market dynamics at work, and this is why we have not yet supported Android, webOS natively, BlackBerry Storm or Symbian devices. I’ll outline that here.

First we are a small company, able to focus on one platform at a time. Developing for a new platform is expensive and the return on investment is long due to the fact that powerOne software calculators are fairly complex to develop. There are lots of development reasons to focus on one platform but there are some market dynamics also.

BlackBerry

We wrote a first BlackBerry app before RIM announced their touchscreen devices, which are a completely separate development process on the front end. RIM has plenty of users — adding about 20M per year — and hypothetically these folks are right in our wheel house as they are a “professional” device.

For us, there are two major problems here. First, it is not clear that the BlackBerry devices are really available to third-party apps like ours. A lot of those sales are to consumers who like to text and send email but wouldn’t purchase a financial calculator. Another large chunk of customers work for corporations that lock down those devices, not allowing their employees to install software on them.

The second major problem is one of discovery. Since there is no unified location for people to find BlackBerry apps, it is very unclear how powerOne would be discovered beyond word of mouth. We spent months marketing this product without a lot of success. We also partnered with RIM thinking they’d help but their Alliance Program is geared toward what we’d do for RIM rather than what RIM would do for us.

I’m still convinced BlackBerry is a good place for us, but clearly not the one where we are going to make a lot of money in the short-term, and, as we needed to prioritize, iPhone with its 75M devices and centralized discovery site took precedence.

Android

Android is just getting hot but few developers are making money on that platform yet. What do I mean by making money? I mean making enough money to pay for three people and cover the bills, which runs at least $20,000 per month (for very low salaries).

There was a great story recently about a developer who made $13,000 in a month (not per month, in a month) and this was heralded by the press as a sign that developers can make money now on Android. But it was clearly an outlier case that occurred because Google featured the app. An outlier case for iPhone is millions of dollars per month, a huge difference.

I have other concerns — like platform fragmentation — but these won’t stop us. Could we do well on Android? I think so. But we started on iPhone and need to see that through before we jump to a new platform and take on that multi-month development cycle and learning curve.

Symbian

We have more requests for Symbian versions than any other, simply because of the length of time it has been around. I have two concerns here. First, will it survive? The main hardware platform has been Nokia and Nokia is putting a lot of time and effort into its Maemo and now MeeGo platforms. Will the company keep using Symbian OS?

The second concern is localization. Since powerOne is highly specialized and Symbian is primarily used in Europe, we’d need to understand the computations used in Europe to make sure we create the right ones. Plus, we’d need to localize the app into European languages, which we’ve never done before.

webOS

So many questions here: will Palm survive? Can they sell enough units to pay back the investment required? Is the Classic emulator with powerOne for Palm OS platform good enough?

Until a month ago we couldn’t even think about supporting it as we have a large chunk of code written in C or Java that we needed to use. Palm had no way of supporting that and had denied to my face that they ever would.

I have to admit there is another factor here. In 2004-5 Palm made three moves that hurt Infinity Softworks badly. After all the work we did to support their platform, these three moves — ending our bundling relationship, jacking up the costs to sell software through their site, firing their education team — killed our business plans and sent Infinity Softworks on a downward spiral that almost ended the company in 2007. It’s a lot like being dumped. It’s really hard to stay friends with old lovers.

Windows Phone 7

Uhhh…. vaporware at the moment.

iPhone, iPod, iPad

We made our bed a year and a half ago when we picked iPhone as the platform to rebuild Infinity Softworks. We’ve learned a ton over the past year about developing and marketing a product. Now is the time for us to make it work. And that’s why we stay focused on iPhone.

Lawsuits and the Ebb and Flow of Tech

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From 1977 to the mid-80s, Apple was the king of technology. Visicalc, Apple IIe’s in every school and the release of the Macintosh were all defining moments of the computer market. Then Microsoft released Windows, Excel and Word. Apple tried to sue and famously lost and the next decade was Microsoft’s as the company road Dell, HP/Compaq, Exchange and Office to the top.

By the late 90’s, Microsoft was reeling, attacked in the marketplace by Palm, Sony and Nintendo, Linux, and the Department of Justice. Microsoft seemed to have lost its way at the same time that Steve Jobs was returning to Apple. The iMac captured imaginations, the iPod and iTunes transformed a market, and then the iPhone and iPod Touch changed the way everyone thinks about smartphones.

The difference this time is we have a new behemoth in town, Google, and as Google plays more and more in Apple’s and Microsoft’s turf (with Android and Chrome), we start seeing a potential redux of late 1980’s Apple-Microsoft battles. This stupid patent lawsuit against HTC (really Google?) may be the first salvo but it won’t be the last.

I’m gravely concerned about Apple. The control issues with developers and content providers have been well documented. We have continued to develop powerOne calculators for iPhone and iPod Touch (and soon iPad) simply because they offer the best hope for a developer like us right now. But every misstep makes me worried about Apple, every lawsuit and kicked out app makes me wonder whether Apple can handle its new found success, its market position. It makes me wonder whether the company can keep from repeating the past, dooming itself to this boom/bust cycle it has had for 30 years.

And it leaves me worried that the biggest innovator in the tech industry will drag us all down with them… again.

Adobe Flash, iPhone Invade My Dreams

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I had this dream* last night that I was working on powerOne software calculator for iPhone at some kind of incubator for iPhone development. It was a huge space — like a convention hall — and had all kinds of people there from small companies to big ones. Apple folks were floating around the building.

All of a sudden I had a brainstorm how to solve the problem of Adobe Flash on an iPhone. I realized that we don’t really need Flash to run automatically in the browser but that I just wanted to see Flash content — like the videos on my family blog. So I came up with this idea of an app that you’d paste in a url. The app would parse the html, pull out the Flash videos and show boxes for each one. To see it, I’d just click on it. No plug-ins would be needed and Adobe already had the ability to run Flash on an iPhone anyway since it’s creating a developer environment for creating iPhone Flash apps.

Because the app was an app and not a browser plug-in, Apple wouldn’t care and it could use a customized WebKit parser/browser for the html to keep it within Apple’s terms of use. To make sure Apple was okay with it, it would be smart enough to only show videos.

At first I tried to get John Gruber’s attention to talk to him about it. For some reason John had an office right around the corner from my desk, but he was always on the phone or busy with people so couldn’t get his attention.

So I took it to the Adobe people who were elsewhere in the building. They LOVED the idea and started working on it right away, figuring this was a way into the App Store. They said they rewarded people for bringing them great ideas and said they’d drop off the 30″ Apple monitor later on.

I headed back to my desk and when I got there, the Apple reps were waiting for me. It was a woman — someone I seemed to know — and she took me off to a room where it was just me and a bunch of Apple people. They were mad and started grilling me about how I came up with the idea and why I would share it with Adobe. They threatened to kick me and Infinity Softworks out of the App Store and were discussing amongst themselves how to unwrap this mess.

And all I kept saying is, I just wanted to see the video of my children.

That’s when I woke up.

(* Yes, it really was a dream. The fact that I am dreaming about this stuff is probably the saddest part of the whole dream.)

Post MWC Mobile Round-Up

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Now we are talking! If I wasn’t a developer trying to sort through this crazy mess I’d be ecstatic about what is happening in the mobile computing space. Real competition is here and we should start to see some serious shake out over the next few years. Let’s recap the operating system players:

Nokia
Not one, not two but now three OS possibilities for the company. The world leader in all things mobile announced a partnership with Intel this week for an OS called MeeGo, which is built on Intel’s Linux-based OS Moblin. Now Nokia supports Maemo on their high-end devices and Symbian on their low-end smartphones.

Where does MeeGo fit in? I don’t know. I met with a couple of Intel folks involved with this project last week. Will Intel finish what they started? Will people adopt Moblin as a part of the entire stack from Intel processor through OS? I can say the crew is doing interesting things for developers for sure but I can’t say whether it will matter as us developers need hardware and lots of devices sold to make it worth our while.

Apple
Now we have the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Apple will likely be announcing new devices in March or April (for summer release) and likely OS4 in July. They are still the thought leader in the US. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

RIM
Great demo this week of a real, WebKit-based browser on a BlackBerry smartphone. This is a huge change for the company and starts to establish a general standard for browsers as Apple, Google, Palm and RIM now all use WebKit. On top of that, with Microsoft’s intro of Windows Phone 7 this week, it ensures that RIM is the only smartphone company focused on business customers. Hello! RIM could use some competition here!

Speaking of business customers, I’m afraid RIM still doesn’t get it in one respect. I keep trying. Maybe someone else can get through to them. Somebody tell RIM that small companies don’t care about BES. They want the features for sure but few small businesses will be implementing their own exchange server and BES to control their remote devices. Why don’t you set up a service that provides BES capabilities but doesn’t require any of the technical know-how? I just don’t get how RIM can’t see this as the real opportunity here.

Microsoft
Who would have guessed that Microsoft could pull this off. If I was a betting man I would have bet Microsoft would develop a device focuses on the enterprise, their bread and butter. Instead it’s much more consummerish (based on the demo) with the same kinds of social media integration features that Palm and Motorola have integrated. Maybe this social networking notification ability has deeper meaning that hasn’t been revealed yet for businesses. One thing to remember, developers, no backwards compatibility here. Windows Mobile apps won’t run. This also means that there is zero devices sold with Windows Phone 7. I don’t think it is vaporware but MS has a long way to go to catch up with 100m smartphone sales per year by Nokia, RIM and Apple combined.

Google
The new kings of licensing, of course, haven’t gone anywhere as Android is rumored to be rolling out on over 20 devices this year. On top of that, Chrome OS for netbooks and, likely, tablets will be of interest to hardware vendors always playing catch up to Apple. Clearly Google is a long-term player here.

Palm
And one of the nicest OSes for developers, webOS, from mobile innovator Palm is vialable, too. I expect sales of webOS devices to grow substantially this year as AT&T and Verizon pick up the Pre and Pixi. Given that the competition is stiff. I believe the days of Palm being the big player on the block are over but that doesn’t mean they can’t be successful financially. The question is can Palm find a niche that can be lucrative? In other words, can Palm find a core capability highly prized by customers that will separate them from the pack. I’m afraid their current emphasis isn’t it.

Web Browsers: Power User Feature

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If there is any better demonstration for the lack of computer knowledge as the comments on this ReadWrite Web article, I don’t know what is. Here’s the short story: this article shows up high in searches. Users apparently enter Facebook in the address bar of their browser, click on this page, and can’t figure out how to log in.

I feel like I’ve had a crusade against Apple for the past year regarding Safari and web sites. I’ve insisted that web apps should be using the browser instead of an application, reformatting for the smaller screen rather than creating an app for their site.

Apparently, I’m wrong.

This may be the most instructive lesson in how people use web sites in the history of the web. Apparently we do need apps for that as users clearly don’t understand what a web site is, how you access it, and what it represents. Apparently, the browser is a power user feature.

I can’t help but wonder if telephones got off to such a rocky start, too.