PavingWays

Yesterday, I came across a very interesting article about the mobile applications market and its future outlook.

“Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet,” said Ilja Laurs, founder and chief executive of GetJar, a leading independent mobile application store. “They will peak at around 100,000 by the end of the year. That will be a tipping point and after that there will be a gradual fall in the rate of development. The full blossom will come in ten years and mobile apps will become as popular as websites are today with consumers.”

But he also warned developers for rushing into this market blindly: “The reality is that this space is only so big and only able to support so many people. Unfortunately the overhype that goes with [Apple's] App Store is what has driven so many to rush to develop for the market. It is fashionable to do apps and every media outlet tells you apps are cool. But the economics are a different story. The ratio of those developers who will fail is about 90%; they will simply not make a return on their investment or make a good enough living at this”. (more…)

We have been eagerly awaiting download stats for Panda Route, our travel planner widget, ever since it passed QA and was published in the Nokia Ovi store.

By the end of last week Nokia finally launched its reporting tool for the Ovi store. Now publishers can measure their application’s success (or failure). The tool is pretty basic, yet very useful. It shows you the amount of downloads and/or purchases - sorted by devices and countries - and your estimated revenue. I am sure there will be more reporting options coming out soon.

The process of publishing on Ovi is pretty straightforward: you create a new content item, upload a file (the widget package in our case), then you define which devices the content is compatible with and submit it to Nokia’s Quality Assurance department. After about a week or so your content will have passed (or failed) QA and goes public after a few more days. A couple of days later you can then see statistics about your content item - download numbers being the most interesting ones for us (our widget is free), but of course also gained revenue etc. (more…)

Our Panda Route Travel Planner widget has made it to Nokia’s Ovi Store. The basic idea behind the widget is that you have all your important travel data with you while you are on the go. It works pretty easy: before you start your journey, you enter all the details of your upcoming trip that you need to remember (e.g. airline, flight times, hotel address, rental car reservation number etc.). Then the widget shows you the current step of your journey with all the needed information depending on the current time. On your Nokia N97 home screen this information will be shown too. So you have access to this information without interaction with the application and even when not connected to the Internet.

We also integrated a Twitter feed matching the location of your upcoming destination. It is a great source for any kind of information, such as events, news, things to watch out for or people nearby; and you know what is going on there before you arrive.

The widget is free and available for Nokia N97. So, before you start your next trip, try it out and let us know what you think!

PS:
You will find our widget in the Ovi store under “Nokia N97 devices” under “Applications” -> “City Guides/Maps” or by searching for “panda”.