Last week we were talking about apps and business viability – well…. I was. I want to push the blog in those directions – design, apps’ revenues, open management principles. So an update on that, a couple of other points and an admission.
By way of a brief update BNET draws attention to an upcoming debate around mobile apps and ad revenues, a point raised by Paul in the comments to the App-enomics post last week.
BNET’s conclusion, that click through rates on mobile ads are enough to provide revenue for mobile apps makers, is up for debate – research shows a click through rate of about 0.48% and the question is – can that sustain businesses or not?
By the way someone should tell the researchers that Nokia makes smart phones. The debate also cropped up in Mobile News a week or two back and in a form that should please our Horizon folks.
Moving on to an issue dear to Symbian hearts, last week UK retailer ASDA, a subsidiary of Walmart, announced a new business transparency policy.
Couple of things – ASDA is installing webcams in its supplier factories so that customers can see conditions there. I think that’s a brave move. Recently ASDA took flak publicly from a disenchanted employee who posted a video of himself trashing some of the food. They’re not new to the problems that social media can bring. But the transparency announcement came after that and it didn’t put them off.
Second thing is ASDA have set up an ideas’ site. The promise is they will share up to 5% of any savings from innovative ideas, with the proposer. Now, 5% sees a little skimpy to me but given the size of the store network it could be substantial. They are pushing it as a possible 100K win for the right idea.
Ideagora’s are a bit of a sore point for us right now. We have one in closed beta and as Freddie pointed out last week, the site, with a big redesign, is due to go live soon. We’ve had a real problem there and here’s the nub of it.
We have an ideas’ site that anyone accustomed to using boards would find very easy to use. We thought that was a little old fashioned and not right for the wider public to use. So we set out to redesign it. I know because it was my responsibility.
I tried to design a site that would funnel people interested in the roadmap, the organisation of the Foundation, and more general “future of mobile” ideas into three separate channels. That brought us up against some intransigence in the platform. My decision making here could have been a little better but hopefully we can start sharing the finished (nearly) result soon.
Meanwhile for those who haven’t read it yet, David’s article below on niche markets for the older consumer follows up on an earlier piece that looked at accessibility.
In the comments to that post Marcus Groeber asked why Symbian has no dedicated accessibility officer or policy. Lee Williams responded by saying it is down to the community to take a lead – that’s what we’d like to see with a lot of outstanding issues. The debate has died down but I for one would like to see it continue. On that very point last week saw Rogers in Canada launch Nuance’s Talks (TM) software for the N71 – there are nearly 900,000 blind and vision impaired people in Canada and the number is growing there and elsewhere
What are the most popular posts on blog.symbian.org? Wikibooks! We get a lot of traction for the posts that point up technical issues like Qt and Symbian C++, and we get what for me is a surprising level of interest in Wikibooks. Right now we seem to be more of an advisory – pointint to resources – that we are a hub for debating key mobile issues. I hope that changes.
