Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on December 30, 2008 – 12:52 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
If you’re an iPhone app developer, you’re basically working for that one big hit. Like the developer of the iFart app, he told VentureBeat ow much profit he makes on a daily basis. A whopping $10,000!
Dutch iPhone developer Vincent Verweij got pretty fed up with this. He burns a lot of money while developing his apps, without seeing much revenue coming back. “To survive in the App Store, you’re only hope is short hits, I don’t want my business to depend on that,” Verweij told Emerce.
He also complains about the low prices for apps - max 3 euros -, the short life-cycle, overabundance, and the cocky attitude of Apple. Verweij developed an app called Camera Pro, which added 15 new features to the camera. That app was a little too good for Apple, so the company rejected the app (for now). Verweij lost around €10,000 because of this disappointment.
So what’s Verweij gonna do now? Hold on to yourself: he’s going to focus on Windows Mobile and Symbian again, since these platforms have more possibilities. I bet he’s also working on Android apps, but he probably didn’t want to tell the reporter.
By the way, Gerard van Enk tipped the readers of Emerce about a research by Mobile Orchard: people are willing to pay more than 99 cents for business and GTD apps
I hope you like that post!
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Written on October 20, 2008 – 3:25 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
This weekend Apple approved our second iPhone app titled ‘iTips‘. We started development on the app during the Dutch iPhone Dev Day which was held August 30 here in Amsterdam.
The App is very simple but promises to be THE app every iPhone should buy first. It contains 100+ iPhone tips for beginners and experts and I’m sure that even YOU will discover a lot of things you didn’t know before.
Here are a few examples:
Apparently the App struck a cord because we have seen a nice amount of downloads in the first 24 hours since it is live. The app is only $0.99 in the US and €0.79 in Europe.
Of course you could also spend a few hours finding these tips online or by reading ALL the documentation you can find. If you value your time you might consider making us rich.
If you do: thank you! Download iTips from the iTunes store.
Written on October 14, 2008 – 11:24 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
We are very proud to launch our first Apple iPhone App today: Nameo
Nameo (website) is a virtual business card exchanger for the iPhone. It will allow you to exchange your business card with one click with any iPhone users who also installs Nameo.
A lot of people have been waiting for this App for a long time. More recently Michael Arrington from Techcrunch quoted blogger/venture capitalist Fred Wilson who wished for a vCard exchange app:
“one of the other things Fred requested in his post was a way to handshake two mobile phones and share contact info. A decade ago we could do this with the Palm V. I can’t wait to do the same with my iPhone.”
Tapulous, the company behind bestsellers Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle briefly released an AddressBook replacement a few months ago which would allow you to exchange information with another iPhone by shaking two iPhones at the same time. They pulled the App within hours after releasing it because it apparently didn’t work and never submitted it back again. Others companies working on similar ideas are My name is E and iCard App. All those projects aren’t live yet though and we are very proud to be the first to offer this functionality throught the App store.
We decided not to wait for Tapulous and built our own unique solution. No shaking here but a simple click on the big green ‘Connect’ button will show you who else near you has clicked the “Connect” button. After you give permission to the person you want to connect with to retrieve your information, and they do the same, you can exchange vCards.
The App is really simple to use and we expect to sell a lot of them. We are also working on version 0.2 which will show a bit more information during the connect sequence and will allow you to enter more information about yourself in your vCard.
We are also working on Nameo versions for the Blackberry, Android, Nokia and other phones. If you want to know about those or have suggestions for other platforms leave a comment here.
What other people are saying about Nameo:
Techcrunch: “Nameo: Single-Button Business Card Replacement For The iPhone”
TinyCrunch: “Do You Have A Card? No, But I Can Give You $3 For An iPhone App That Does | tinyCrunch”
Washingtonpost: “Nameo: Single-Button Business Card Replacement For The iPhone”
Whataboutmac: “Nameo: Business Card exchange done right”
iPhoneinRTP: “iPhone app video Review: Nameo Business Card Replacement For The iPhone via @techcrunch” (Video!)
Best iPhone Empire: “Nameo: The End of Businesscards”
TechAddress: “Nameo: Single-Button Business Card Replacement For The iPhone”
Venture Cashcow Paddock: Startups: “Visitenkarten per iPhone austauschen”
Hiconomics: “Nameo… iPhone app to replace Business Cards?”
Desinformado: “Nameo: Business Card exchange done right”
Arnnet: “Nameo for the iPhone aims to replace business cards”
Crenk.com: “Nameo Makes Business Cards Obsolete”
iPhoneRocket.com: “Exchanging contacts is easy with Nameo for the iPhone”
CellPhoneHits: “Exchanging contacts is easy with Nameo for the iPhone”
IntoMobile: “Nameo allows iPhone users to exchange virtual business cards“
Written on September 6, 2008 – 9:04 am
Peter Evers, Next Web Mobile editor
This is a guest post by mobile marketeer Peter Evers based in London who frequently blogs about mobile on peterevers.net.
After working in mobile marketing for quite some time, recently a friend challenged me to think of a business plan for his mobile startup MaptheGap. His plan was either to sell his company or making money by selling pro accounts.
I think choosing the sell out strategy is one of the most common mistakes startups make. They hope to make their service so appealing that a big player has no choice but to acquire them. What if that’s not happening? Well, then you run out of money sooner or later, go bankrupt, and your startup has stayed a startup forever. In these times of economic slowdown it seems a pretty risky strategy.
Another failing strategy is to start with a pro account right away. So you’re launching a new service, but you prevent your very first users from using the full functionalities of your service? Since the first phase is mostly about convincing people to actually use your service, this will lead more to frustrated users than to money in the bank. Besides, a lot has been written and said about everything becoming free anyway.
So, what would be viable business plans to make your mobile service profitable? I have summed up three business strategies, which do not exclude each other, to earn money with a mobile service.
- Advertising - Very obvious, but still a lot of startups think of it as the a-word. They are too afraid to upset their userbase. But aren’t we all still watching tv and reading newspapers? Advertising doesn’t bother people as long as it doesn’t interfere with the usability of your service. Besides, the techniques to target ads on specific characteristics of your users and their location are pretty advanced, so your users might even think of the ads as helpful.
- White labeling - A white label product or service is a product or service produced by one company and rebranded by another company to make it appear as if it’s theirs. In terms of a mobile service, it means that you license the technique of your service to another company for a fixed fee, so they can rebrand your service as their own at an event (fair, release party etc.), offer it to their customers or on a bunch of other occasions.
- Licensing - By far the best way to grow a big audience, which obviously boosts your advertising sales, is to get your service preloaded on people’s phones. So your service is on their phone before they have even thought about buying it. This is hard, you’ll need to speak to phone manufacturers and they’ll need approval of the operators who sell their phones, but will certainly mean a big breakthrough for your service. Since the rise of the mobile Internet most manufacturers also have a ‘Downloads’ application preloaded, but the downloadable content within this application isn’t preloaded but can be changed at any moment. If you manage to get your service in there, every user of a phone of that particular manufacturer, looks at your service as soon as they want to download something. One of the most successful examples of this is the App Store on all the iPhones. The other side is that the operator or manufacturer will demand a share of your advertising revenue, but it’ll be worth every penny.
Although according to Michael Arrington revenue models aren’t really web2.0, I’d advise you to be ahead of the pack and think of a way to monetize your service instead of waiting for demanding investors (like Mike himself, what a coincidence) to come along buying shares you could have sold ten times higher.
Written on August 20, 2008 – 12:16 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The iPhone App store is one of the many great features of the Apple iPhone. Hundreds (thousands?) of developers are tinkering away on apps that when launched are sure to bring riches and fame to its inventors. All you have to do is browse the ‘Whats New’ section on your iPhone or iPod Touch on a daily basis and you will be able to choose from a wide variety of innovative new apps. Some useful and some funny.
But there is more. A lot of ‘would-be’ developers are posting their ideas for the perfect app to their blogs and posting mock-ups of next generation interfaces to Flickr. These apps are nothing more than ideas waiting to be implemented and sometimes ideas mainly waiting to be ignored. Either way, here is a selection of inspiring ideas that I found on Flickr:
1. Fancy GPS app
Ricky Romero presents a screenshot, with a big proud smile, of his upcoming GPS app. What will it offer? We can only guess:
2. Parmesan cheese grater
This app is an example of some of the more frivolous designs. From the comments: “In my quest to find the best iPhone apps out there, I submit a Parmesan grater application for your approval. Steve Jobs has not returned my calls, but I think this is a pretty cutting edge idea. Pecorino plug-in sold separately.”
3. Horizontal keyboard outside Safari
A really simple concept for a horizontal keyboard. Of course, this one is already implemented by Apple but only used in Safari when you tilt the iPhone. Wonder when it becomes available for Mail and other apps that use text input.
4. Keep an eye on electricity in your house
A very cool concept which helps you manage energy consumption for your house: “Current State is a real-time energy use monitoring system and timer for powered devices combined into one. The Current State system is made up of two parts, a mobile application for you cell phone, which allows you to control and monitor electricity use from anywhere, and a series of Plug-Ends that give you control over the products around your house.”
5. Scan offices for certain rooms?
I have no idea what this is supposed to be and how it would work. But hey, it looks cool!
6. DJ on the move
This one shouldn’t be that hard to build for someone with Xcode experience. Right?
7. Take presentations to another level
One of the first Apps I bought was Stage Hand. It turns your iPhone into a remote control for Keynote. You can see a preview of your slide and highlight stuff on the screen or read your notes, all on the little screen in your hand. This concept takes it even further and it also look better:
8. Virtual ruler
This one might be one of the most interesting concepts I have seen so far just because it makes me wonder if it could actually work. What do YOU think? “Would be nice to display a virtual ruler over the camera picture to roughly measure distances. Certainly doable as we know the characteristics of the iphone lens. It could use the accelerometers to adjust the perspective (tilt, etc).”
There are a lot more impressive designs for imaginary iPhones, iMacs and iPhone Apps here.
What would your imaginary iPhone app do? Make coffee? Get you hot dates? Yeah, all that. But what else? Let us know…
Written on August 6, 2008 – 9:29 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
While European techies were sleeping last night, the American ones discovered a rather absurd iPhone app. It’s called I Am Rich and has two remarkable characteristics. One: it only lets a red diamond glow on your screen - sometimes a secret mantra appears. Two: the price $999.99. Will developer Armin Heinrich make his fortune with this shiny app?
Whether he does or not, he DID get some tech bloggers angry. They think the I Am Rich app is provoking serious developers who don’t manage to get their app in the Apple app store. MG Siegler from VentureBeat calls on Apple to “wake up or grow up”. Dan Frommer from Silicon Alley Insider notes:
The upside for Apple: $300, or 30%, of all purchases. The downside: Good luck enforcing that “all sales final” policy on this scam.
Although I understand where these frustrations are coming from, I’d like to call on these bloggers to take it all a bit more light-heartedly. After all we’re talking about a company here of which the CEO once said experimenting with LSD was “one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life.” Experiments like I Am Rich keep Apple interesting. It’s a form of art, you can interpreter it however you want to.
See it as a protest against the lifestyle IT girls like Paris Hilton. A way to tone down the iPhone fuzz. Or.., it’s a genius parody on all these folks who have been using their iPhone in a somewhat too showy way - waiting for the utter satisfying experience of someone asking… “wow, is that an iPhone…?”
Update: TechCrunch has a confusing update on the story
Written on July 10, 2008 – 12:17 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
To stimulate the iPhone craze to grow to absolute bizarre proportions, Apple has just launched the iPhone app store. While I’m typing this, thousands of other bloggers are doing the same. Well what the hell, almost everybody loves the shiny object, so here it is.
Download iTunes 7.7 and access the store here. Then you can browse the 27 pages of iPhone apps, which are absolutely useless for some hours until the iPhone becomes available in New Zealand stores.
By the way, my dear Belgian readers, I feel really sorry for you guys, having to pay as much as 525 euros for the 8GB iPhone and 615 euros for the 16GB. I hope for you that they’ll soon fix that law and allow subsidized phones.
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
