WorldMate, the mobile travel service, comes to the iPhone

Written on 4th June 2009                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel

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.

AppStore, blackberry, business, iphone, itunes apppstore, markets, mobile application, Nokia, palm, smartphone, Smartphones, Symbian, travel, Windows, worldmate

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Developing iPhone apps not worth the effort anymore

Written on 30th December 2008                                                                                                              11 COMMENTS
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

app store, Apple, iphone, Symbian, venturebeat, Windows Mobile

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All your Symbian are belong to Nokia

Written on 4th September 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

I genuinely believe there will be a lot of interesting developments in the mobile industry during the next 5 years that will come from a number of innovative startups, but it’s hard not to get equally excited about the power play between the main vendors and mobile OS distributors.

I’m looking forward to the competition between Apple / iPhone / App Store, Google with the massively potential Android (and “Chrome for Mobile”?), Microsoft with its large Windows Mobile market share and its upcoming Skymarket application store, and not to mention Nokia with its huge bet on Symbian.

Nokia announced about two months ago that it intended to fully acquire Symbian for €264 million (or $410 million) and turn the software over to the Symbian Foundation. This is a group of nearly 30 companies including AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Vodafone that seeks to turn Symbian into a royalty-free mobile software platform focused on converged communications.

The Nokia / Symbian acquisition has now come (almost) full circle with Samsung backing out and selling its stake to the Finnish mobile giant. 

And the numbers are looking good for Symbian too: during the second quarter, Symbian launched on 19.6 million devices, up just 5 percent from 18.7 million for the same period the year before. Symbian also reported that it had 92 phone models in development (the highest ever achieved), an increase of 48 percent on the 62 models in development during Q2 2007.

Exciting times, indeed.

Nokia, Samsung, Symbian, Symbian Foundation

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