Notes from Mobiles for Change Session

These are a little late in coming, but here they are - notes from the session that I facilitated on mobile phone application development at the M4Change conference in San Francisco on Nov 4, 2008 (organized by Katrin Verclas from MobileActive.org). We had a strong contingent of developers there - some who had recently built mobile apps for some of the leading companies in the valley. So, lot's of good information was shared.

Prime takeaway: Due to various factors, the best foot forward right now is to develop an app for the iPhone, but to rely heavily on the platform's Web-integration tools so that you can be ready for a quick transition to other platforms when those platforms become viable.

So, ok, what are these various factors?

#1: Distribution & montetization

Even though many other phones are in the hands of many more people, when it comes to mobile apps, the iPhone is #1. People use their apps more on the iPhone, consumer more data, and download more apps.

#2: Controlled Platform.

Love it or hate it, the iPhone platform and system is dependable. gPhone is not really a gPhone. It's a gOS bundled with tMobile - and without Jobs the dictator, things do fall apart. For example, I followed a link on Google's site to purchase the gPhone a few weeks ago and I got to an area of tMobile's site where they had me login, which i did, and then they told me that the gPhone was not available for me to purchase. Just one example of how when the Dictator is not in charge, the process isn't as smooth. Developers in the group said that they had had similar experiences. 

Other stuff we talked about:

* It would be cool to have a Yahoo Pipes for mobile apps. [The Extraordinaries project that we're working on comes close, actually]. Yahoo's Blueprint and Tarpipe.com were mentioned.

* We mentioned TacticalTech's Mobiles in a box. It's a lot of great info about running mobile apps and campaigns.

* The problem with developing just a mobile web site is that you don't get access to any of the nifty phone APIs

* We talked about developing countries - saying that there really wasn't anything significant you could do with mobile apps quite yet. 

* Someone mentioned that in Japan people use their apps primarily to consume - while in the US, people use their apps more as utilities, for doing.

* Someone noted that iPhone penetration among lower income brackets in the US is increasing.