Category Archives: Mobile/Smartphone

Writings on laptops and smartphones, including devices, software and development.

BlackBerry Alliance Program An Insult To Developers

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RIM rolled out their new Alliance Partnership program this week and it’s just another sign, to me anyway, that RIM is missing the boat. Before I could write my own blog post, though, Ronen Halevy over at BerryReview.com wrote everything I was thinking (here and here).

Here it is in short: RIM’s historical focus on enterprises has caused short-sightedness on the part of consumer efforts (and by consumers I’m referring to everyone not in Fortune 2000 companies and government). Instead of developing the software to cater to consumers, it seems, they completely defer any consumer relationship to the carriers and hope for the best. The examples are everywhere:

  • Why do OS updates come from the carrier instead of RIM, and why do we have to go find them rather than those updates being pushed to us?
  • Why isn’t BlackBerry’s App World pre-installed on devices and why doesn’t this service work over wifi on the devices that support it?
  • Why do enterprises get RIM’s impressive BES software for syncing with mail, contacts and calendars but consumers get the poorly created and implemented BIS implementation which doesn’t even support push email?

And now we have the new Alliance Program, as if the old one wasn’t bad enough. The old program was pay $2,000 per year to get pre-release software, a couple of devices, a cheap BES system, and access to the BIS-B wireless sync protocols. It also included tech support with your own technical guru.

For two grand, I thought we would get marketing, too, but every time RIM had a chance to help us out, they passed on the opportunity.

Now comes the new program. For the price of $2,000 plus thousands more to buy 45 participation points, we get the same benefits we had before. So the price is higher and we have to jump through more hoops than writing a check. We get points by getting people to buy BlackBerry’s, sending company reps to RIM’s dev conferences, and writing case studies.

Personally, I’m insulted. This program isn’t about us, the developer and what we can bring to RIM and how RIM can help us be more successful. It’s about what RIM can get out of us. Instead of rolling out a program that gives us better placement on the web site, elevates our standing in the App World Store, and helps us promote to the vertical markets that buy our software, we get no additional benefit for more cost.

To me, it’s just another shining example of how focused on enterprise RIM really is. The $2,000 badge of honor from RIM and access to technical support means something to enterprise developers. For consumer markets, it’s no help.

I really hope RIM gets their act together. They really have developed amazing devices for those who care more about communication than infotainment. And given their dominance in enterprises and government, they have a great opportunity to win the prosumer markets that a product like FastFigures is focused on.

Palm Pre, FastFigures and powerOne

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I have had a steady drip of requests since the Palm Pre launched for a webOS version of our software. I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about the platform, what I think Palm is doing right and wrong, and relate that to our own software products FastFigures and powerOne.

First, let me say that I like what Palm is doing with the Pre from a developer perspective except one major flaw. A year ago I wrote a post on the recipe for beating Apple and highlighted three things that the company needed to do. Palm has nailed two of the three:

  1. Build a beautiful, touchscreen device.
  2. Make it synchronize with web-based applications.
  3. Focus on offline use of web-based applications.

Palm is flubbing #3.

Palm has built their platform so that all applications are written in CSS (the page style), HTML (the content) and Javascript (the interactivity), the core languages of the web. But these three languages are intended to handle the user interface, or client, side of the equation.

What’s missing — and what Palm insists it doesn’t need — is the underlying technology that handles the business-side of web applications. Developers use a multitude of server-side technologies to do this, including Ruby on Rails, PHP, .net, and Python. Most mobile platforms use either C or Java to handle the business logic.

Palm insists it doesn’t need anything. And this is a major mistake.

Our software requires the business language to run the engine that performs all the calculations. Javascript won’t do primarily because of security and speed issues. In addition, insisting on using Javascript for business logic flies in the face of everything I learned about how to do web development.

Palm’s perspective is that applications that need business logic should interface with the web, such as Google’s search engine. Except an application like ours works best when the calculation is resident on the device, not because the calculations are better but because our customers don’t trust the Internet connection with their devices. There are just too many holes.

So what do our customers do when it comes to the Pre? They can either use the Classic emulator, which we don’t officially support but seems to run our software without a problem according to customers who have tried it, or use the web-based version of FastFigures at http://www.fastfigures.com/mobile. Either way, if you want our products on Pre, please drop us an email so we know.

And hopefully in the future, Palm will realize their mistake and give us a business logic language to work with. For now, though, I won’t hold my breath.

Psychology of iPhone Pricing

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When I started in this business 12 years ago, there was tried-and-true consumer price points: $9.99, $19.99, $29.99, $49.99, $99.99. Only a few apps — Microsoft Office, Adobe Photo suites come to mind — were able to price above those levels. Anything under $19.99 was considered an impulse buy and anything above $49.99 was considered professional quality.

This never was in the mobile/smartphone/PDA world. In this world pricing seemed to break down as $10, $15, $20, $29.99, and $39.99. Only the rare app was able to get more. We charged $59.99 for powerOne Finance but bundled both the Palm OS and Windows Mobile version together for that price. If we had been in the old model of consumer pricing, we would have been between $100 and $200 (with slightly different presentation and functionality). Impulse buy was anything less than $15; professional apps were at $29.99 and above.

Now those prices have morphed again, at least for iPhone. For whatever reason — first products in the AppStore, lack of trials, single purchasing location, Apple’s devious plan, natural laws of commoditization, Chris Anderson (just kidding) — all pricing have depressed even further. It seems that the new scale is $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, $3.99 and $4.99. Only the rare app can charge more.

The interesting thing to me is that the mentality hasn’t changed. Now, $0.99 is an impulse buy and $4.99 denotes professional quality.

Case in point: In April, a competitor was at $5.99 then $4.99 then $3.99. Never really impacted FastFigures’ sales, but we could never catch up with him, either. For a week, he went free. When he went free our sales shot through the roof. When he came back to the paid side at $3.99 he made no headway. It didn’t impact my sales at all (I was way ahead of him in Top Paid) and the same was true when he dropped to $0.99. He sold a lot more, catapulted above me in Top Paid, but it didn’t impact my sales. Only when he went back to $3.99 did my sales start to fall off as I was clearly losing units to him and he was able to stay ahead of me in Top Paid.

One conclusion: Top Paid position has a clear impact on sales. I think most people try the 1) cheapest and 2) first found product that they were looking for.

Price, though, also impacts sales. So where’s this cut-off point that attracts the alternative, professional customer we were looking for? Is the connotation that anything under $0.99 is a throw-away app? Or is that point $1.99 or $2.99? Clearly, $3.99 has a different connotation but I’m curious if that “professional level” actually falls in somewhere lower.

Or is my entire theory flawed, and the reality is that software is diving toward $0 price points, as my Building an iPhone Business surmises? I can definitely say the market is shifting. And I don’t believe, unlike other developers, that it’s Apple’s fault. I think they are just accelerating the curve.

Two World’s Apart

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I have been hearing more and more developers getting all excited about the world of mobile, comparing it to the early days of web. There are some similarities: rapid adoption, increased awareness of capabilities, increased expectations.

There’s a difference between what’s happening in mobile and what’s happened on the web, though. The web was an open standard, evolved from government creation and collaborative efforts. This openness allowed anyone to participate and to use the web as they saw fit. Ideas flourished, advances happened, new development environments were born and we were allowed to grow by connecting with customers in unique ways. If you had/have a great idea, you buy server space and throw your app out there and find an audience that you can directly connect with. It works on every platform (read: browser), more or less.

Mobile has not been and likely will never be like this. It’s a series of walled gardens and closed connections. Look at how far down the value chain we as developers are. Between us and the customer is the carrier then the hardware vendor then the store manager. Our products and prices are being commoditized. Our value as developers is only valuable in creating customer loyalty to a piece of hardware, with enough get rich stories to make everyone believe in gold. Have a unique idea? It can only come to fruition after learning a specific device’s nuances, paying the company for the right to develop, paying for certification, being subjected to weeks of testing, and then being tossed into a pit with 50,000 other applications, never being allowed to touch the customer or derive additional income from them again. Oh, and this is one platform. Do it again for every platform in existence.

Will this change? Likely never for software that runs on the devices. It’s impossible, once these opolies develop to break them down and open them up. But there is a way out. For those of us trying to make a living, pray that combination of 4G, Wi-max and Wifi makes the pipe wide and the connections constant. For it’s the web that bails us out of this mess.

Does Anti-Trust Pressure Force Apple, Palm To Play Nice?

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It’s going to be a very busy couple of weeks in mobile land. This week, Palm finally ships the Pre. We’ll finally see if it lives up to the hype. And then next week, Apple will have their World Wide Developer Conference, with many and varied rumors of new devices.

The most interesting news, though, going into this Mobile June Extravaganza is the announcement that the Palm Pre syncs with iTunes (it excludes DRM protected media and applications). The big question and speculation of course is: 1) Is Apple giving Palm permission? and 2) If  not, when will Apple shut down Palm’s media sync?

This “relationship” is only heightened by the two companies. Palm’s been poaching Apple developers, precipitated by former Apple and now Palm executive Jonathan Rubenstein, the brains behind the iPod and revitalized Mac. Apple’s Tim Cook, current COO, has publicly said, “We’re going to go after anybody” who rips off Apple’s technology. “We’ll use whatever weapons we have at our disposal.” (quote from Fortune Magazine, June 8, 2009, p88)

To say the least, the relationship is full of animosity.

Sure sounds like Palm is “hacking” Apple’s iTunes. After all, why would Apple help the company they are trying to simultaneously ignore/kill? If so, I would expect a “kill switch” built into an update of iTunes in the near future.

Given all this, though, I’d be surprised if Palm is doing this without permission. Palm’s making a big deal out of the iTunes media sync, as they should. And would you make a big deal out of a major feature that could be ended at any time? No way.

My guess is there’s a ghost in the room. With the Democrats in power, don’t be surprised if there’s more discussion of anti-trust issues. Apple, with close to 90% market share with iTunes and the iPod, has got to be thinking about protecting its back side. No better way to do that than let a competitor or two sync with your system.

And with Apple’s public comments about Palm, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is Apple’s hubris allowing this relationship to happen. After all, why should Apple worry about Palm syncing if, according to Apple, Palm will not be around to take advantage?