Nokia Developer Summit 2009 Offsite

Nokia Developer Summit 2009 was held at Monaco, 28-29 April. I wasn't able to join, but still wanted to know what's going on. With today's technology, it was actually both easy and a pleasure.

First news came realtime via twitter hashtag search #nds09. Several reporters, occasionally even in different sessions, offered good selection of facts, opinions and background info. Thanx to at least @mobilejam @smashpop @AAS @bryanrieger @gloom303 @rayval @inti @mobiliser @henriquemartin onsite, as well as several offsite commenters.

Next there's some more or less realtime blogs, most notably Nokia Conversations and the official event website. They do have an advantage, having access to restricted insider info, and did a splendid job. The official website is most likely the best ever after-event site I've seen. Take a look, if you're interested in getting into the feeling of almost being there!

Talking about blogs, have to mention the old reliable All About Symbian. They might not be the fastest, but provide thoughtful, insightful analysis worth following. Podcast AAS Insight #69 contains NDS summary starting at 21+ minutes. Also Qt-based Orbit UI supersedes S60 AVKON in Symbian^4 article is an excellent overview of the future of Symbian platform. Check the comments, too.

Another interesting blog this year was Forum Nokia Blogs, where FN Champions were requested to blog from the event. Personal touch was a nice addition, great idea!

I'm not a fan of real-time video, with all the background noise, people walking by and coughing and seeing too many talking heads almost in focus. Talking backs of the heads are even worse, can't even try to read from the lips! These videos by Nokia Conversations are something else: professionally edited, short and to the point, with excellent picture and sound quality.

Main news from my offsite view, mainly via twitter (my comments inside parenthesis):

• It's not resolved yet how to get flash apps into Ovi Store (but I'm sure they will get in there)
• Forum Nokia delivers resources to 4+ million registered developers, website receives more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month. (Personally I've always "wondered" about that 4 million registered users, but 1.5 million "unique visitors" is an impressive number.)
• WRT is an abstraction layer. (Nokia keeps pushing WRT so hard, guess it will become a serious development platform)
• Ovi Store accepts only certified apps: Symbian Signed or Java Verified. (Flash is a bit open, hopefully Flash solution could be reused with python apps.)
• Finally a form of Map API will be available from Nokia (with restrictions and only for selected partners, but finally it's available)
• Developer focused twitter feed from Symbian Foundation @symbiandevco (great to see they embrase latest tech)
• QT Orbit announcement via Twitter, to replace AVKON. (Major major news. Truly surprised how little analysis there has been about this. Too big to understand or devs are just too skeptic)
• Application suite re-factored and re-written to take advantage of Qt APIs, Orbit widgets, and Direct UI. (This means S60 will fallback one year vs competition. Can they use the option to their advantage?)
• Maemo 5 Beta SDK was released around this time (there is a future for Maemo)

Wondering whether expos will become like big sports events: want to be there onsite, but will have no idea what's happening. Calling offsite friends to ask where to go, what to see.

How to Generate Money

Chris Andersson, of The Long Tail fame, points to an analysis about how web 2.0 businesses actually make money. The biggest revenue seems to be online advertizing. I would have though biggest source of income is Venture Capital investments.

The original analysis (by Box UK) is both interesting and useful. It shows what has been tried, what is being used, what are related possibilities. For start-ups it can help to (re)define what is their market and business model. Usually one model is not enough, so it's useful to see options where to target next growth sprint.

Analysis is based on data from Webware's "Top 100 web apps for 2008". This gives an enourmous amount of credibility to the analysis. You can see several well know companies, who are actually using these models: Amazon, Google, iPhone, Opera, eBay, !Yahoo, Skype, Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook, bitTorrent, YouTube.

Some are more successful than others. Something to seriously think about.

Does Innovation and number of Patents correlate?

McKinsey blog What Matters has an article "Building an innovation nation", which they summarized as a graph showing how innovation and US patents are directly related.

The article itself is well-thought, balanced and logical, but the graph gets all attention. One picture is worth ten thousand words.

Is number of patents really the most important evaluation criteria? Do you really measure world-wide innovation with number of patents in USA? Not in the world, but in USA? Only?

The article says USA is slipping in innovation, because many Asian people either return home or don't come at all. Japan and Europe are getting old. New innovations comes from emerging areas, which just might not register patents in USA. India and China we already know, look out for Africa.

iPhone AppStore statistics

Eye opening iPhone software statistics from Pinch Media with realistic sounding analysis: free vs paid, does advertizing pay off, counting eyeballs. Here's the slides.

It's always better to know what you're doing. The next best thing is to follow closely the reactions to your (random) actions. The worst thing is to just hope for the best. However on the average it's better to do something, than nothing at all. If you fail, then fail spectacularly.

Is there Social Networking outside USA?

One of the hot trends in MWC Barcelona 2009 was mobile/social networking. Lots of talk, but talk is cheap. Here's some statistics at Site Check - Web Site Advice, comparing January 2009 data from Compete and Quantcast.

It's sad to see how little life there is outside USA, not even worth measuring. Anyway it's always interesting to see statistics vs statistics. Wondering how Twitter is really doing?

Handango Yardstick 2008 Analysis

Simon Judge made a nice short analysis of latest released Handango statistics. Here's my additional comments about the Handango Yardstick of 2008:

Sorry Simon, isn't Android share 0.1% and that 10% belongs to Smartphone Software (Windows Mobile Standard)? Then half of Handango sales is for Windows!

• TOP-5 is utilities and personalization software.
  
• 7% share of Symbian software sales contain both S60 and UIQ.
• Number of new mobile content titles during 2009 is 10000 - but what platform were they made for?
  
• Sales of 51% Windows, 11% Palm, 31% RIM suggests strong USA orientation.