Devices, gadgets, industry news

Although the iPhone appstore and the iPhone has nothing to do with flashlite, i thought i would take a bit of time to write this article. One of the main issues developers have with the flashlite platform is that there is no direct route to market for your apps, and of course, many a developer has quoted the success of the iPhone appstore, and how (note inverted comas) “easy” it is to sell your content and make lots and lots of money. There has not been a lot of transparency in this process as of far, and it almost seems to be becoming an urban legend of sorts, that if you develop a iphone app and get it on the appstore , you are in line for instant success.

At ustwo™, over the last couple of months, we have created and distributed 2 very different applications for the iphone, each with polar differences in functionality, development time and success. Mills has been releasing figures over the last few weeks of sales, and has spoken in detail on twitter of the processes we have used to try and increase publicity ( you can follow him on @millsustwo if twitter is your thing).

The Applications

The first application we developed and released was Steppin Lite , a free game for the iphone and ipod touch that uses the touch screen to ‘run’ across a pond filled with Lilly pads as fast as you can. The users time is recorded @ the end, and uploaded to online scoreboards. This was then followed by a paid version, which retailed @ £0.59p, and added numerous more level styles with a much improved online score boarding system.

In contrast to that, Mouthoff is a much simpler ‘novelty’ application. The idea is to hold your iPhone in front of your mouth and talk, shout, laugh, scream or sing to get your new lips moving. The unique thing about MouthOff™, and what sets it apart from other similar apps, is that its sound reactive, so the animations move in real time with your own voice. This application had no free version, and also retails at £0.59p.

Development time

To give a comparison of the development time involved in these projects, Our first release, steppin (lite and full version) took a couple of months, with 2 people working on it. This was the first application/game developed in OSX, so there is obviously a learning curve to take into account. For those of you that haven’t played the game (which indecently you can down load from here )

Mouthoff was at the opposite end of the spectrum. With 2 people working on it for a week, it was ready to go live on the appstore.

Steppin is very much a full featured game, which is reflected in the development time, where as mouthoff has very simple functionality, but i suppose is very ‘novelty’. It’s important to note, that as a working development company, having people working on this full-time can be very expensive for a daily developer rate, so it is important to get that money back in revenue. And this is were the trend very much bucks the urban legend of the appstore. If you have spent ages creating a really cool app, surely you should make a fortune? With access to millions of users, all linked into itunes/appstore on there iPhones and iPod touches… According to the marketing given by apple on release of the appstore and the press, surely we should be millionaires in a month or two?

Sales

Unfortunately that has not been the case so far for us, although admittedly, the apps have only been on the market a short time ( so here’s hoping ). Below are a couple of images that show the sales for steppin’ and mouthoff, since they were released. I have only added the last weeks numbers here, if you want full details, check out the mills™ moblog , and you can get figures and downloads over the whole month.

The first thing you will notice is the difference in total revenue. To put that in to true perspective for you, steppin and has been out for 4 weeks, and mouthoff has been out for two and a bit.
When you start to see the figures, you start to get a true idea of the secret to success on the Appstore, which to put it bluntly , is marketing and exposure.

The mouthoff application has been heavily promoted , initially by us, but more recently by other blogs, and also tv shows. The viral campaign we started with the website (showusyourmouthoff) has played a large part in getting this exposure by giving users the chance to get their videos featured on the site, and showing people what great fun the app can be.

You’ll notice the massive spike in numbers when it was featured on bbc2 ’something for the weekend’ show. Before this the numbers were falling from the original release, but this picked things up again. The application suddenly shot to number 11 in the uk top paid apps chart. Later in the week, Creative Review magazine did a video blog post reviewing the app, which again has started to make figures rise, and since then , the application has been featured on a number of other reputable blog sites.

We have also been spreading the mouthoff application through Twitter, facebook, moblogs, Press releases and any other social marketing tool that Rowan & mills™ (self proclaimed PReam team) can get there hands on.

All this is a far cry from the ‘post it on appstore , and they will buy’ attitude that seems to be prevalent belief. If you look at the actual number of hours put into marketing and PR , it soon starts to add up.

Again, this is reinforced when you look at steppin’s sales. Even though they are much lower than mouthoff’s, you can see as soon as it became a ’staff favorite’ on appstore, sales tripled initially, and are now starting to rise again.

Conclusion…

So, are appstores nessecary to make decent money as a mobile developer/company? I’d have to say yes, but with a ‘BUT’. They are completely essential as a way to distribute your mobile content to your potential users. Without an easy to use, pre-installed way of accessing a market place to get these applications from, the user simply won’t bother. In my mind the reason apple managed to get the business model so right on their setup boils down to a few key elements.

The ‘BUT’ comes in the form of if you want to truly succeed and make your development costs ( and a profit ) , It is all down to exposure, and getting people excited about your content. Without that, your just lost within the ocean of the 15,000 other apps out there fighting for attention…

Now we just need a similar setup for Flash lite content, but that’s another story….

get mouthoff and steppin from itunes.

Hey all,

Thanks for the great turn out for the eSeminar, hope you enjoyed it and were
excited about some of the announcements we covered.

The recording is now available, and I have posted the link on the UK MaD
adobe.groups page as well as a full summary.

http://groups.adobe.com/groups/e5ecd800f7/summary

On the blog post, there are also answers from mark doherty to some of the
questions would could not answer for you on the night. Hopefully these
responses will clear everything up for you, but if you have any other
questions, I know mark views this list, and will be more than happy to
answer them for you.

I have also included the link to the new RSS feed off the blog on the UK
Adobe groups site, please feel free to subscribe, as we are trying to update
this as much as possible.

http://groups.adobe.com/resources/1bef7dc8f6/feed

On the 28th January 09, @ 5pm GMT we will be holding the first eSeminar meeting for the UK Adobe mobile and devices usergroup this year.

Myself and Stuart Varrall will be speaking about the upcoming Flash Lite distributable Player, and how it will affect the flashlite developers in the UK.

We will be going into a bit more detail on how it works, sharing some of adobe’s road map for this initiative, and showing you some interesting data on current flash lite usage in the UK market.

Please join the group @ http://groups.adobe.com/groups/e5ecd800f7/summary and we will be posting details of the link closer to the time.

matt

I have just started to launch the wallpaper back catalogue that Me Mobile produced last year, and was until now only available through the Moket MCN. I have uploaded the first five pieces this week, and will continue to upload more as soon as i get a chance.

The first 5 pieces to go up are : Blossoms(re-active) , Office Guy (Randomised) , Hula Bear (looped animation), Naughty Monkey (Randomised) and Pet chihiua (randomised)

These pieces of content range from static animations (all flash lite of course ) through to randomised and re-active wallpapers such as blossoms.
For the first 2 weeks or so, the me mobile content will also be available half price, as a ‘grand opening’ special offer.

It’s quite strange looking over some of these wallpapers again after such a long time, and looking forward to getting some feedback.
You can access my seller page on VoeVeo here, and check out the content for yourself. You can also access the Me Mobile website here, which contains some more examples of content to come.

Matt

via alessandro,

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia is paying 264m euros ($410m; £209m) to buy out the other shareholders in handset software firm Symbian.

Nokia, which already owns 48% of the UK-based firm, intends to develop its software to compete with Google’s planned Android operating system.

For its part, Symbian said the takeover was “a fundamental step” in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, which is expected to start operating in the first half of 2009.

The foundation will bring together Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone in collaboration on a new, royalty-free open software platform for mobile phones.

This looks like great news for flashlite development,

check out The BBC technology news for a full article

check out Mark Doherty’s post for an Adobe insiders view

view symbian’s white paper on the symbian foundation for indepth details

view the symbain foundation website for upcoming news

ryan Unger, has recently posted about a site distributing 50 flashlite games in (probable) violation of copyright. I you are a flashlite develop and have released your games, check out his post to see if your content has been stolen or infringed upon so that you can take the appropriate action.

The Game List (as identified by the target site):

-Pong Lite ——- ———whack attack
-road rider ————– -memik
-monster kick————- -payjaz
-locura ——————–lunar lander
-hiorlo ———————dan muffin
-dawn of the fly ———–clear the field
-foursight —————–dance
-cornrush——————martian mayhem
-bubble shooting ———–are you thirsty
-log jam——————-fruitball
-crazy taxi—————–crazy taxi night
-micro invaders————penalty shootout
-speedracer—————retch
-snapper game————pocket slots
-doodle——————-lite poker
-casino blackjack——– -knights puzzle
-tempiduri—————-danze van hellzing
-frisbee fetch————-fruit slot
-fugitive tortoise——– -go sushi
-jan ken——————cube – puzzle game
-sokoflash—————-snake lite
-presidance————- -moby
-iSnake—————– -cQuenzer
-Tic-tac-toe———— -Fruitball
-Darkkiller —————-Remember
-Ping ——————–Blackjack
-Floored —————–Dodge

matt

Dale has just informed me that ClubMoket has just gone live.

Club Moket (clubmoket.mobi on your phone browser) is, to our knowledge, the first off-deck mobile portal dedicated to selling Flash Lite content. We have launched first with our “Mokimations” catalogue, featuring animated wallpapers and screensavers. Q1-2 2008 will see games, applications and mobile video added to the service. We’re really pushing out content that shows off the great visual nature of Flash, as well as handset interactivity (for clocks, random animations, MoCarbon products, etc)

This presents an entirely new and accessible channel for global customers, and one that we look forward to filling with great content from the wider FL community through the Moket Content Network.

This is great news as it gives the fl community a great opportunity to start making money from personalization content.

to read the full press release , click here

to read dales blog post , click here

and to view the .mobi site, point your mobile browsers to clubmoket.mobi, and gain access to some great flash lite content for your mobile. (or stick your number in the widget on the sidebar of this site to have a wap link sent straight to your handet via SMS)

Matt

I have started to sell some of my flashlite wallpapers and screensavers on Nokia market place. This should make the content available via internet,wap and preminet.
This is a good resource for flashlite developers to take some of there content to market, with nokia taking a slice of the selling price for providing the portal. Very easy to sign up to, and your content should be available after a few days. Follow the below links to find out how to do it.

link to market place : here

link to market place developers resources: here

I currently have 2 pieces of content online, a screensave for the N95 and wallpaper for s40 fl2.0 nokia devices
you can find them by searching for “falling code”

Matt