Do you Mobile Download?
When it comes to your cell phone — do you download? Despite the fact that a lot of mainstream consumers are reluctant to take the leap, an increasing number of mobile companies are betting the farm on downloadable mobile applications. M:Metrics says 9.9 million U.S. subscribers accessed mobile content via a downloaded application in March, up from 7.4 million in March 2006.
Monday morning mobile startup Mig33 said it has raised a round of $10 million for its mobile application that it says already has 4 million users. Last week eBuddy launched its mobile app after having a mobile web site for many years. Radar recently launched a client, and other start-ups like uLocate and Mobio have released downloadable apps. The trend has been pushed along by the Internet giants that have been going mobile. Google’s gmail got its own wings last year, and Yahoo has put a lot of effort into mobile applications more recently.
So, have you taken the plunge yet and downloaded a mobile app? Most likely if you’re one of our mobile-friendly readers, you have at least checked out Google’s maps or gmail. If you’re a Valley worker, you’ve probably got a lot more than that in your phone’s applications folder. Tell us how mobile-download-friendly you are, and in the comments what you like:
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I would love to use my mobile for the internet and other cool stuff but it’s just to damn expensive at the moment.
Incompatibility is the main problem in mobile-downloads. e.g. Google maps supports both Windows Mobile 3 and 6. Whereas Gmail does not. (Yes I can go to mobile website).
Windows Mobile 2003 is not very old OS, still it is not widely supported. There has to be a common platform for mobile apps building that can support wide variety of mobile phones.
@spud: I pay 20 dollars per month for Cingular data service for unlimited data usage. There are other things though. Lots of mobile apps and services (like social networking) are text/sms based. So if you use them heavily, you might be interested in 5 dollar unlimited text’ing service. I would recommend you to give it a try since there is no contract. At the end of the month, you would know if it is worth those 25 bucks or not.
Downloading is too difficult for your regular mobile phone user – they just want sms and voice. Yes, early adopters will love to download stuff and try it out, but that’s as far as it will go. If it comes ready installed on the phone, then regular folks may use it.
I like Google Maps the most and use it 4-5 times a week. Best usage was when I was waiting for my wife in SFO and thought of having lunch at an Indian place and found tons of them around using gmaps. Navigation is pretty neat and you can call the phone number directly from the details screen.
I installed tiny twitter on my blackberry… had to configure my device for direct TCP/IP connections, but having a full featured twitter client on my mobile is pretty cool and was worth taking a minute to install – tiny twitter keeps updating in the background and has a pretty good set of features
I’ve got Cingular’s Media Bundle that costs about $20 a month and allows unlimited data and text messaging. My two downloaded apps are Gmail and Google Maps and then I use Google Reader out of the mobile browser. All three work great on my Moto RAZR.
I use Maufait Mobile from http://www.maufait.com for local search, driving directions on my Blackberry. Its easy to use and is fast, try it out!
All these mobile download companies are destined to fail. You could have the development prowess of Google at your disposal and your application would only work on some of the handsets, on some of the networks, some of the time.
I’ve been doing mobile for 5+ years now. And by doing I mean writing applications, studying the platform and watching the business models (come and go).
The operators will never let a thick client on to the handset that will, in any way, shape or form, challenge their position or run the risk of turning them into a dumb-pipe. No single application is runnable on all phones on all carriers all the time. Even if you take the top 2 phones from each carrier. No application will run on all of them.
This is a bad thing? Right? Wrong. In 5 years mobile browsers will be near what browsers are on the desktop. What’s happening right now is there’s a swell getting higher and higher behind the carrier’s wall (and they just keep stacking the proverbial bricks). Other than drain that swell, they’re letting it just get taller and taller. They’re forcing any successful mobile company to think “browser”. If they were smart they would allow some drain off. Like Cingular, they allow third party apps to be installed on their phones, but if you look at like a Verizon – you can’t run code on a Verizon handset without a written contract with Verizon.
What the mobile carriers want is to install crippled browsers on to the handsets. But Nokia, Moto, Sony, & friends want the best browser on the phone so you’ll choose their’s over a competitor’s. Carrier’s are nothing without their fancy handsets.
And Internet access is ubiquitous among all carriers. Why? Because if they don’t allow access to the common Internet – customers just choose a competitor.
SO…downloadable content is doomed. The carriers are forcing the browser based solutions.
It really is quite expensive. I love how you click “download” and then they tell you that they will charge you another 3.50 for downloading fee’s and whatnot. It really is not worth it, i really don’t think a cell phone should be used for more than calling and the occasional song while ur bored.
Check out my blog whenever you guys get a chance
http://blog.eyebag.ca
Cheers
The EYEBAG Guy