Coca-Cola?

Some local beer?  (Kilimanjaro beer.  They got the marketing to tourists thing down)

Nope.  The ads you see plastered on every store in Tanzania are for cell phone carriers.  It turns out that 4 carriers are in brutal competition to capture the market.  These are tiGO, Celtell, Zantel and Vodacom.

(did GoLoco steal its logo from tiGO or the other way around)

Cell phones the most revolutionary thing to come to Africa in decades.  It was always too expensive to run copper lines so not many people had them.  Now you get crystal clear coverage right in the middle of the Serengeti.

It isn’t cheap though.  In Tanzania you are charged for outgoing calls by the second.  Everything is prepaid, and text messages are free.

This is a country where people walk miles just to go to the market to trade goods.  Not many people have cars and the ability to coordinate over distance changes everything.  As such, everyone wants to have a phone and companies are more than happy to compete for their business.

…… OK you got it?  I can wait if you don’t…….

The point of this app is to demonstrate some of the iPhone’s capabilities.  I am planning on using it to promote some other apps I will charge for later.  One interesting thing about the iPhone is that it is essentially a computer in your pocket.  I like to think about iPhone application business ideas that leverage this and the fact that the device has such a great set of sensors (camera, accelerometer, touch screen, microphone).

Applications that really intrigue me are ones that have the phone represent a physical object.  See the light saber and whip apps for examples of this.  This is the reason I made A Deck of Cards.  The app is meant to simulate something you would do with a physical deck; turn over a face down card. So check it out and tell me what you think.

This is because of the fragmented mobile device market of which currently includes 10M iPhones or so.

Looking at only iPhones underestimates the Apple application market

Sure Apple sold 10M iphones in the last year, but what about the iPod Touch?  It also runs apps.  The iPod touch addresses a whole other market outside the cell phone market.  I haven’t seen many sales estimates that include touch numbers however.

The richly featured iPod touch may be only be the start. The cost of materials for the iPhone has been reduced to only $174.33.  With much lower component costs, Apple can now move features such as an accelerometer into lower end iPod models.

Mobile Platform Endgame

Apple will eventually extend the iPhone/touch OS platform backward into their entire product line.  Apple has already sold 200M iPods and their batteries are slowly losing their ability to hold a charge.  As consumers refresh their aging MP3 players, they will be phased on to apples new mobile version of OS X and apps such as more cowbell will gain whole new audiences to entertain.

Overall iPhone interface responsiveness takes a step back

One thing I instantly noticed with the iPhone 3G is that is just isn’t as responsive as the first version. It is hard to say whether this is because of overall system instability or merely my impression being skewed because of immature 3rd party apps. These apps often crash and have their share of bugs, which I understand. What I worry about is the ability of 3rd party developers to deliver apps as smooth and responsive as the Apple ones. Mobile applications have a different set of constraints than those on the web or desktop. With less speed, limited power, and a user on the go, mobile apps have to be developed to use minimal resources and provide information quickly.  Fancy animations and splash screens (yes I mean you twitterific) need not apply.  Thankfully, to keep developers on the right path, Apple provides a performance monitor and a great SDK.  Most importantly, developers only have to write for one set of hardware (iPod touch being very similar to iPhone)

Android opens a can a worms

The challenge for android is that application developers have to write code that runs multiple hardware platforms. Small shops simply will not be able to do performance testing on every phone if the OS takes off. Will the android emulator be able to solve this issue?  Will the SDK allow testing by USB like Apple’s iPhone? If not, the result will be some applications that run very poorly on certain android phones.

The first android phone released will set the tone for the platform. It will hopefully be a high powered smart phone.  Underpowered hardware platforms may give android an unfair black eye if Google is not careful.  We will see how they manage expectations.

Conclusion

It is exciting to see mobile computing become a reality with the new OS’s by Apple and Google. As they get more stable, the user experience will depend less on their OS’s stability and more on the capability of 3rd party developers. Both companies need to make sure software development is as easy as possible and the power of their SDKs will be the key.