Postcards from Perkistan

Extremely interesting news coming out of the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona. New Media Age in the UK reports that a number of keynotes sought to address the issue of an increasingly fragmented app market and the implications of this moving forward.

The list is extraordinarily large (though not surprising) for such a young industry. Apple, Orange, Microsoft, Google, Blackberry, Nokia, Samsung and O2 have all launched (or are launching) stores, and more importantly (worryingly), platforms for apps development and distribution.

The business man in me says that this makes perfect sense. Immature market, large global players trying to vie for dominant position and doing so the only way large companies know how to - by developing unique platforms and hoping they win the war (or a portion of it).

Then, inevitably, the launch of multiple platforms and stores is met with the cry for standards and cooperation (I can see the committee forming in The Hague right now…). So even before some stores have launched, people are crying out for a centralisation of the market!

The complicating factor in the most recent store announcements (Samsung, Orange etc) is that I understand platforms offering different stores, but hardware manufacturers offering stores that then offer multiple platforms (I assume) just completely complicates the market.

The long and the short of it for a start-up like us is that we simply have to pick our targets, and that number is going to be substantially less than the players I’ve listed above. We have to do analysis of our audience and each store/platform’s audience and pick the platform most likely to deliver us customers. That’s okay and relatively easy at a pure platform level. We have decided to go iPhone app in the first instance and are working hard with MoGeneration in Sydney to create a meaningful and powerful app for our users.

We always envisaged moving to Blackberry for the corporate market and then Symbian for our second (to iPhone) consumer market. Apologies to the companies involved for the generalisations of your user groups

Now we have to contend with making decisions about those platforms and then extrapolate that out to unique requirements at a hardware (Samsung) and carrier (Orange) level - crazy!

So what do I think will happen? The same thing that happens in most maturing markets. People like us (app publishers) will stay away from the multiple choices (due to cost, effort) and stick to the big guns.

It just seems like it would all be a lot simpler if the corporations just faced the fact that some kind of shakedown in the market will take place (at a competitor or standards level) and worked to leverage the apps market together now, not then.

But I’m not responsible for the Orange share price I guess!

Justin

One of the things we want to do at Perkler (and Adam is working hard to implement) is to not only allow you to search across your loyalty portfolio in one place, but receive special offers or discounts, on top of the current loyalty offering, to get you in the store.

As we build relationships with retailers we’ll be pushing this as an opportunity for them and consumers and will offer coupons for use on the phone and web to facilitate this.

It’s a good space to be in as belts tighten and interestingly the idea is gaining traction in markets that you wouldn’t expect.

The US is traditionally big into coupons - thanks to green stamps and the Great Depression there is a strong culture of coupon use. The UK on the other hand has has a good tradition of coupons, but don’t tend to attack them with the same veracity. Until now!

New Media Age out of the UK reports today  (you’ll need to register with NMA to see the whole article) that searching online for coupons is up 133% in the past year (my guess is that demand and searching will double again in the current climate in just a few months). At the same time Google is talking about the move to mobile advertising.

Perkler - mobile based search results linked to an additional discount coupon AS WELL as your current entitlements is looking pretty good in this space.

Justin