WorldMate is huge in the mobile world -it first started as a Palm OS app back in 2000. Then, as today, they realized that “travel = mobile” and so it made sense to build a mobile application for travelers. WorldMate had an innovative approach and built what was the industry’s first on-device portal with a myriad of travel content for online/offline use. WorldMate was so successful that many PDA/Smartphone makers including Nokia, Palm, HP, and Sony Ericsson pre-installed it on their devices. More than 3 million people use WorldMate across the Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm OS and Windows Mobile platforms.
But that was then when making mobile apps meant being pre-installed on a pre-sale phone. The world has moved on since the launch of the iPhone to a new world of online application stores. Now with after the SDK 3.0 and right before the expected launch of iPhone 3.0, WorldMate has come to the iPhone app store.
In many ways this is a huge validation of the iPhone platform, it’s one of the first dedicated for business applications of the kind that are huge in the BlackBerry world to make the platform jump to an appstore full of shall we say “less serious” applications (you can see more of this attitude in the latest WorldMate Max video embedded below).
It’s easy to see why they are coming to iPhone, the potential market is huge; there about 40 million business travelers in the US that take over 200 million trips totaling $200 billion in sales. According to WorldMate these “road warriors” are continually jostled around with 30%+ of flights are delayed or cancelled, with meeting schedules change all the time, and because there’s a lot of stress trying to make split second decisions in unfamiliar environments with a lack of relevant information. What’s more, these travelers spend on average $1000 per trip. WorldMate is the only service to that can help by effectively aggregating this disparate information. But that is only half the battle. WorldMate further distinguishes itself in that it can take this information and turn it into solutions. For example, if your flight is delayed, WorldMate will let you know and then suggest all the alternative flights you can take instead to make it to your destination on time.
WorldMate in both its free and Gold versions have both shot to the top 20 apps in the travel category and it seems that not only is WorldMate ready for iPhone, iPhone is ready for WorldMate.
The title of this post is a quote from Wittgenstein which kept popping into my head as I was traveling through Europe these past weeks. I visited France on a ski trip, stopped over in Vienna by airplane and then traveled to Budapest by car.
I speak Dutch, some English, a little German and unfortunately only know one word in Hungarian. The conference I’m visiting only had 4 English presentations: my own, Ernst-Jan’s and two more. Unfortunately none of the other presentations used the only Hungarian word I know.
Hungary has a population of about 10 million people. After WW1 the country got split up and Hungary lost 72% of its land (a sensitive subject even now) which means that there are about 14.5 million people who still speak the language.
In Europe we tend to compare ourselves to the US regularly. We are jealous of the great start-up cultures in cities like San Francisco and the entrepreneurial spirit that so many Americans seem to have. But how much difference is there really between these two parts of the world? Lets take a good look at some statistics.
Population
The US has a population of more than 300 million. Compare that to Hungary and you aren’t too well off. Compare it to Europe as a whole and the figures look different. There are more than 700 million Europeans. That is twice as big an audience as the US?! Suddenly I don’t feel so alone anymore.
Language Those 700 million people are divided by language, right? They all speak different languages so it is too difficult to reach them? Well yeah, there are 23 official langauges in the European Union and 65 languages and/or dialects in total. That sure sounds fragmented.
Everybody in the United States at least speaks English, right? Well, almost. English is not the official language of the United States but more than 82% of the population speaks it as their native language.
Lets look at Europe again: 51% of all europeans speak English as a second or first language. That actually means that there are more people who speak English in Europe (357 million) than there are people in the United States, in total!
Money
It isn’t really about the language is it? It must be about the money. The United States is a richer market. But is that really true?
It looks like the GDP of the US was about USD 14,330,000 in 2008 and USD 18,930,000 in Europe (In millions of dollars).Yep, Europe is doing a lot better than the US when it comes to GDP. Maybe GPD growth? Is the US growing faster than we are? I don’t know what the results will be of the current economic crisis but when you look at from 2006 till 2007 the United States GDP grew 4.9% and our GDP grew 16%.
Maybe you say I’m making these numbers up as a biased European? Nope, they are from the CIA World Fact Book. Surely the CIA can be trusted on their own numbers?
The more I think about it the more interesting Europe becomes to me:
- There are more people in Europe
- More people speak English in Europe than there are people in the US
- We have more money in Europe than in the US
- We are growing faster
I have to admit, all these ‘facts’ are based on statistics. And we all know how trustworthy those are. But I do suggest you do your own research and look at what you can find out about the differences between Europe and the United States before you pack your bags and move to San Francisco.
Now all that is left for me to do is convince all the Internet Entrepreneurs in Hungary, and Europe, to actually start speaking English…
Some markets of the new economy come first when we look at expansion possibilities of web giants. Europe, of course, because of the high penetration rate and China, with the highest rate of usage growth and more than 1 billion potential customers. It’s clearly a good idea to take a chance in those markets. But what about possible others?
Let’s take a look at Turkey. With an estimated Internet penetration of 37%, Turkey has a total Internet user amount of 26 million people. You can find more to it in this study of Sina Afra from Ebay. I wish to give an introduction to this newly blooming market, which, I think, should be on the list of every company who has the goal to be successful on a global scale.
Where is the buzz?
It is a clear fact that the Turkish society is into socializing. According to Wave 3, social networks are by far the most used Web 2.0 tool in Turkey. 67% of the Internet users have a profile on social networks, which also makes it clear why Facebook has 3.6 million users from Turkey. Myspace, Hi5, Perfspot and the local Yonja are also some of the bigger social networks that are very popular in Turkey. Next to social networks, blogging and news are the other most important areas in the Turkish Internet market. News are of course ruled by local players, which are mostly web sites of existing news providers like NTV, Hürriyet, Milliyet and Habertürk, but Google seems to be aware of the gap and launches the Turkish Google News.
E-commerce is also an important area, where the Turkish market is far from satiety. Because of some cultural characteristics, Turkish people still don’t think it is safe or clever to shop online. Surely this doesn’t mean that there is no one there. Ebay for instance made a move and bought 20% of gittigidiyor, which is the leader of the auction market.
Turkish startup scene; a newborn baby
When we look at the innovative Web 2.0 applications and services that have been built so far, we see a small amount of startups behind them. These are mostly people with international relations who have seen the future, and want to create it in their own country. 2008, however, has been a very productive year for Turkey, with many milestones. In my opinion, the startup scene was born just this year. What we’ve seen in the Valley, in Berlin, or in London, is now also happening in Istanbul. Small teams do roadshows, weekly or monthly events take place and the first VC funds were founded (Leventure, LabX, Ilab, Golden Horn Ventures etc.). Also, the first investments were raised in a way it happens in the world. For me, events, fresh startups and foreign players are important benchmarks to evaluate a country’s potential. That’s why I’ll sum these up. (more…)
The greatest threat to any successful startup is competition. The more successful you become, the more competition you will piss off, and each contender will bring with them a new strain of hassle.
I’m not talking simply about competitive products, no I’m actually referring to the many underhand tactics that will be employed by at least some of these so-called competition. So what are these threats and how to best deal with them?
The Murky World Of Business
The first port of call for underhand competitors will be to learn everything they can about you, looking for any weaknesses they can find. These typically involve ‘competitive intelligence’ techniques which is a fancy way of saying they employ private investigators who will even sniff through your garbage.
Competitive Intelligence
This typically takes many forms and practitioners are not afraid to stoop to low levels. Private investigators are generally extremely creative and efficient, not least cost effective, who have many contacts and techniques that they leverage to build a portrait around individuals within the company. They can get access (break in) to bank account details, tap phone lines, bug offices, cars, even homes, follow people, pose as reporters / employees (man on the inside) etc. to gain access to people and information that could be useful.
Utilization Of Competitive Intelligence
Depending upon the nature of the rewards, a campaign to ‘levy distress’ will be initiated with various arms but the same goal. The goal being to chop the legs off ‘metaphorically speaking of course’ the main targets.
Legal Assault
One of the most cherished methods is to create phony legal cases against the targets. They do not need to be serious, just a host of frivolous nonsense is sufficient. It is very cheap to send out threatening letters and tie targets up in court battles which can become exponentially destructive and costly to fend off. Typically they will be cases that are 99% twisted around so that the aggressors will be claiming the targets are actually distressing them.
Creating Havoc
Paying off disgruntled employees to cause hassle within the company, setting traps for the targets, reporting the targets (to officials and dependencies) for anything and everything they can. Disconnecting ties between targets and their networks (such as distributors, retailers, suppliers etc.) and any other psychological torture they can muster.
Intellectual Property Theft
There is nothing like learning from others mistakes, all services, products etc. will be reversed engineered to learn secrets from the targets, then the cream will be repackaged into similar offerings, where the ‘competition’ use the building blocks that have been successful along with their greater financial muster to encroach upon the targets market. Patents and copyright laws are of very little significance for young companies who have not the experience, nor resources to leverage the law to their favor. Further, the rogues will be carefully protected from legal assault themselves as they use ‘front’ (disposable) companies for their full on attacks.
David Vs Goliath
Typically the targets ‘upstarts’ that enjoyed early success will be naive to the murky world of ‘business’ where cannibals and dinosaurs await the fresh bloods arrival for their feasts. In order to survive, here are some practical tips:
Remain focused on the ‘real problems’ within the business.
Continue to innovate and move the market.
Learn the tricks of Goliath’s trade, the more you know about him and his tactics the better.
Be very careful who you trust, especially when it comes to these ‘pillars of society’.
Learn how to bat!
Batting
If you do find yourself in the middle of a ‘war of terror’ then the quicker you learn how to fight, obviously the better. Understand that the world of business is much like nature, it is not personal and brutal. Speed, intelligence, posture, bravery and trickery are the necessary assets to be packed in your survival kits.
Written on 4th June 2009
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WorldMate
is huge in the mobile world -it first started as a Palm OS app back in 2000. Then, as today, they realized that “travel = mobile” and so it made sense to build a mobile application for travelers. WorldMate had an innovative approach and built what was the industry’s first on-device portal with a myriad of travel content for online/offline use. WorldMate was so successful that many PDA/Smartphone makers including Nokia, Palm, HP, and Sony Ericsson pre-installed it on their devices. More than 3 million people use WorldMate across the Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm OS and Windows Mobile platforms.
AppStore, blackberry, business, iphone, itunes apppstore, markets, mobile application, Nokia, palm, smartphone, Smartphones, Symbian, travel, Windows, worldmate
Written on 3rd March 2009
Written on 15th August 2008
It is a clear fact that the Turkish society is into socializing. According to 
Written on 24th May 2008
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