Hello from Moscow, Russia. My name is Dmitriy Tarasov and I am an independent mobile software developer, author of Blacklist Mobile, Whitelist Mobile and Ting! products. I have also written several articles relating to Symbian security and proof-of-concept Symbian 9 malware.

I’m going to tell you a little about my experience in developing and selling shareware for Symbian devices. I think you will be surprised but I personally believe that learning Symbian-specific C++ and development itself is the easiest part of software production.

A year ago I decided to quit my job and concentrate on developing and selling mobile software. I believe that the most exciting thing in making mobile app is ability to use telephony functions and improve user experience in using mobile phone. This has led me to the three products I mentioned, the latest being recently launched, Ting. More of Ting below.

Figure 1. Ting! logo.

At the same time I realize that since I’m an independent developer and do most of the work myself so there is no sense in trying to work with all possible mobile operating systems. In my situation the only way to succeed as a mobile software vendor is to concentrate on one operating system and to do my best, developing high quality products for this platform. As you may expect I’ve chosen Symbian since it is the only operating system which gives me as a developer deep access to telephony and device functions and at the same time gives me as a software vendor access to a really huge audience.

I was lucky enough to realize early that software development is the most easy task in selling product. What really takes most  of your time is application promotion.

Implementing license manager, getting publisher id, signing, getting agreements with distributors, etc. That’s why my first product was partly aimed at building essential distribution relations like Handango, Ovi Store, Nokia Download, local Nokia stores here in Russia, etc. But at the same time it was a serious product called Blacklist Mobile which is very successful at the moment.

While working on Blacklist Mobile and it’s modification Whitelist Mobile, I’ve managed to gather all the telephony-based functionality you can gather using S60 APIs (including some Nokia’s partnering API’s). After that I started to think how to use this in my next products. And how to use it in a product that can be targeted at  a wide audience that has entertainment value. That’s how the idea of Ting! came to my head.

Ting! shows a full screen slideshow of a caller’s pictures during incoming calls. So  the caller can assign to a particular contact several (or at least one) photos. And when this person calls the user can enjoy full screen photos of the contact. It works like this:

Actually there are apps that act as a full screen caller on the market, but they mostly show just one picture. I assume that the ability to see several contact’s pictures during incoming call at once brings some fun and personalization to Symbian devices.

The application is written in Symbian C++ and consists of 2 parts: service and UI. Service is hidden and used to catch incoming calls, get incoming call number and check if it is added to the application database. If it is in the database, the application starts the slideshow with predefined pictures. The UI part is used to communicate with the application database and manage contacts, photos and application settings:

Figure 4. Ting! app UI.

The most essential part of the Ting! application is a part based on Symbian’s ICL (Image Conversion Library) which is used to actually decode input contacts’ photos to native Symbian bitmap format.

After decoding, a picture can be shown during an incoming call and can be modified in the application menu (the user may want to rotate a picture for example). Of course it is not a good idea to try to show a large photo picture which is stored on the user’s device, so during assigning photos to contacts, optimized copies of pictures are created. I should say that ICL (like many parts of Symbian) is a piece of delicious cake in terms of architecture. A good place to start on learning ICL is through the Forum Nokia Example.

But in fact image manipulation is just the tip of the iceberg – there were lots of tasks to solve: storing data, settings, reference to address book, etc. I won’t describe many technical details of Ting! implementation since there is one thing which is more interesting for shareware developer.

I believe that solving architecture and coding tasks is essential for developing a solid product. But it won’t make your solid product successful. Having this in mind I decided to implement functionality which helps me as a publisher to spread my product wider. This functionality is gathered in “Get More!” and “Service” functions and consists of such functions like “Get More” which allows user to download additional content (like my other products) from mobile website,

Figure 5. “Get More!” Functionality.

“Updates” (which is obvious updating function), “Subscribe to new” (which allows user to subscribe to news on new products and receive them by sms), “Send to friend” (allows to send sms with a download link), etc.

Figure 6. Additional marketing functions.

The logic is simple – if a user likes your product he will obviously want to download more products from you.

Another tricky thing if you want to sell your mobile application is implementing trial and licensing functionality. One year ago I understood that the only way which is acceptable is to let user pay for app just using his mobile device, without PC. I implemented license manager which used to send Premium rate sms to unlock applications, but finally came to Openbit License Manager which completely satisfies my needs in preparing shareware Symbian apps.

Figure 7. License Manager

I have a strong feeling that functions like “Get More!” and “Subscribe to new” are essential for any mobile software product. Another important thing in mobile software distribution is building distribution chains.

The traditional way for Symbian developer is to upload products to Handango, SymbianGear, Mobihand and nowadays Ovi Store. But the fact is: it won’t give you big income. It is still money, but what really can make you happy as a software seller is pre-loading. If you are lucky enough to get an agreement with devices distributor who sells devices in actual stores (like Carphone Warehouse for example) and he gives you a chance to preload your software to thousands of devices, you will make significant effort.

This may seem fantastic but that is true, there are examples of successful pre-loading projects. I know that because my Blacklist Mobile and Whitelist Mobile products have been pre-loaded to Carphone Warehouse devices. I think this is serious possibility for both developers and distributors to increase their income.

I hope you have found this information interesting. If you have any questions or want to share an idea please do not hesitate to contact me:

Email: root@dtarasov.ru
Twitter: DTarasovMobile
Website: www.dtarasov.ru