Disqus - Latest Comments for matthaus

Re: Holy crap! Nokia is in talks with Microsoft about Windows Phone devices?!

matthaus — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:55:18 -0000

I tend to have the contrarian view, Lucian. Elop/ Green are not ignoring the software mess their predecessors have produced, they actually are cleaning up. I don't know any specifics about the latest developments or the validity of Eldar's claims, but I know that there were informal talks about this since September (http://venturebeat.com/2010.... Part of the problem from Nokia's side seems to be that MeeGo phones are delayed form what I hear. That's partly due to tech issues and to Elop/Green wanting to nail the MeeGo launch.

I am becoming way more upbeat about Nokia if Eldar's news are true. This means that somebody in management is tackling some of the brutal truths.

Re: Will Nokia build Windows phones?

matthaus — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:32:36 -0000

> "While even Symbian fanboys are not ready to compare the N8 to the iPhone or the cutting edge Android phones" ... You're just parroting stuff you've heard elsewhere from iPhone/Android fanboys. The N8 in fact beats iPhone 4 and the best Androids hands down in most respects.

First of all, I greatly respect All About Symbian and as usual they probably have done the most thorough review of the N8 or the E7. These reviews are supportive, full of honest benevolence, yet mixed ...

For this article it's not relevant to compare these devices, in fact I do not voice any personal opinion on this topic. The N8 is a fine phone and it will have success in many markets, I would guess. On that personal note, I am considering to buy the E7 as a business phone for myself. Love that keyboard.

> For example, it takes developers on average 15 months to master native Symbian C++. With that 50%, Symbian’s attractiveness to developers goes from dead-last to middle of the pack... Two leading blogs I read said they surveyed developers at Nokia World, and generally the response was that developing for Nokia is now a quicker, better, easier experience on Nokia vs iPhone/Android. The new Qt stuff really leads the competition. I have also seen various anecdotes over time that devs are making more money from Ovi Store versions of their products than iPhone or Android and this is to be expected given the greater reach and better store. Matthaus, you really need to update your knowledge and experience with Nokia/Symbian before you write articles like this, otherwise it's just exposing your general ignorance of the platform and the fact you're parroting prevailing anti-Nokia/Symbian attitudes.

There's a lot in these statements which is just plain wrong:
- Anti-Nokia/Symbian. Since 2008 I've spent countless hours repeatedly talking to various Symbian and Nokia folks. Also, this blog and our conferences gave Nokia/Symbian a lot of coverage. Amongst others, we launched Symbian Horizon at MobileBeat 2009, we had Tero speaking there. I attended last year's SEE in London. This year we had various cutting edge Nokia stuff at MobileBeat, again.

In fact, at a conference last year a Symbian representative showed a presentation which cited VentureBeat as the lone "supportive"/"objective" SV blog towards Symbian. I have this presentation on my laptop, I can send it to you if you like.

- general ignorance of the platform and the fact you're parroting
At heart I am product manager. If I write something software related I talk to people who dealt with source code (eg http://venturebeat.com/2009.... At this Nokia Developer Days I spent most of my time in the technical sessions and discussed these issues with folks on such a level. I specifically talked to folks about their experience with the Nokia Qt SDK for Symbian as I know how important it is for Symbian/Nokia. In this article I am using Visionmobile's report to illustrate the take aways I had from my developer conversations. By most accounts the progress of the Symbian/Qt combo is impressive as I say in the article, but only "average" by now.

If it helps you in any way I hear in my conversations the "developer economics" of MeeGo is even "better" than on Android.

Re: Will Nokia build Windows phones?

matthaus — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 03:50:27 -0000

@Crowd_Sorcerer

From what I understood the decision was already taken before Stephen Elop became CEO.

As someone who said down with Symbian's David Wood back in 2008 (http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/04/interview-with-symbians-david-wood-we-can-match-iphones-success/) I was impressed at the Nokia Developer Summit how far Nokia has come with its Symbian/Qt strategy. I have a lot of respect for the work which I have seen there.

The question is whether that's enough to keep Android at bay in the traditional Nokia strongholds. 2011 will be an Android onslaught and the industry knows it.

Android is accelerating the hardware price battles among device makers in a way that has been inconceivable way for most of the industry folks I speak to. Just ask some of the HTC folks about the margins of their Android phones.

Many device makers have a second look at Microsoft and recognise that they may need MSFT to keep some balance. These days most tech blogs may be very pro-Android, but the industry is very much divided by the latest developments. MSFT has become way more attractive in recent months.

(Before anyone accuses me of an Anti-Android attitude, please read some of my 2008 pieces on Android & embedded devices on this site)

Nokia, of course, still has operational, logistics, distribution, production and hardware excellence. They have at least another 24 months to get things right.

In the last couple of weeks a lot of Nokia-MSFT rumours have come up in SV. Some VCs are talking. TC has picked up a rumour last week. I am expecting more to get exposure in tech blogs in the next weeks.

Interesting times.

Re: Behold, marketers — some iPhone numbers you can work with, finally

matthaus — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:48:20 -0000

@Jonathan
Your VB free data inquiry service has found out the following: "We (ComScore) "do not differentiate (yet) on paid versus free apps, nor do we have a way of measuring engagement. We are working furiously on enhancement to our reporting capabilities, so will have more data soon!"

Re: Google’s mobile jihad: Support the web, live with the app

matthaus — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:53:39 -0000

@kent @justin bailey
You both have a point. Both Apple and Google are driving a major technology push in mobile, mostly together. Yet this article is not about what you rightly describe as largely an "imaginary" war between these two. The article is about some implications for other players in the mobile eco system like advertisers and developers who want to advertise for the monetisation of their apps -- where these players need to make costly choices between these two. That's also particularly true for bigger mobile content players like CBS -- they can change their development strategy only once in a while.

Re: Behold, marketers — some iPhone numbers you can work with, finally

matthaus — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:36:51 -0000

Hi Jonathan. I will be on a call with comScore later in the day, actually ...

Re: Verizon flirts with Apple, but Android is already girlfriend material

matthaus — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:12:13 -0000

Some feedback on Tricia's comment over at Moconews:
http://www.moconews.net/ent...

1) Nobody needs to join OHA to deal with the stuff. And 2) Sprint already announced they will launch an Android device this year, so we don't need to speculate about that any more ;)

Re: With Three deal, is Skype killing voice revenues for carriers? Not yet

matthaus — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:56:16 -0000

Good observation, Alan. We also wondered about that as it's the big question as you say.

Update: We were only able to obtain the information that the service runs on a circuit switched network.

Re: Verizon flirts with Apple, but Android is already girlfriend material

matthaus — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:46:35 -0000

From my talks with Verizon app folks late last year and listening to CTO Dick Lynch at MWC this year I think they are the potential grand prize for both Apple and Google. The way things appear now they will spearhead the data explosion on their LTE network.

Having said that I don't believe the CDMA iPhone rumours. A CDMA iPhone just doesn't make sense. LTE, maybe, but I don't have much information about that.

Verizon itself, I suspect, does not care much about the hoopla in the media on potential deals with Apple or Google. In their third party app program they have a device-centric approach, not a platform view. Related to app stores and how much Verizon would like to control them -- I could only speculate on that.

Re: How much will Skype pay EU carriers for the success of its iPhone App?

matthaus — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:16:35 -0000

The exact statement is "Skype’s iPhone application, which lets users make cheap or free calls over their phone data plans, is a raging success."

I'm not doing any backtracking on this, I believe. The point of this article is that the EU bill gives operators more power, including the power to block or charge applications like Skype if they wish so. This is part of a wider trend. My references to the MWC hopefully show that carriers push to get additional data revenue from all the apps we use on our iPhones and G1s. This should ring alarm bells with all the developers which create data-intensive applications.

Re: How much will Skype pay EU carriers for the success of its iPhone App?

matthaus — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:20:32 -0000

@RH. Carriers usually don't disclose this type of information, so verified quantified data is pretty hard to get. So you can take the statement related to "It goes over WiFi, clogs the data channel and doesn’t do anything for operator revenue" as circumstantial evidence I've repeatedly heard from carrier folks. Carriers seem to dislike Skype for both the data usage and the substitution of revenue issue.

Still, I've managed to digg up some related numbers around this which I will be happy to share in one of my next posts.

Re: JumpTap launches mobile AdWords competitor

matthaus — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:02:47 -0000

Hi Marek,
good to see you as a VB reader.

Imo, mobile targeting is in its very early stages, despite talk and ppts around the "promise of mobile" at every industry conference I attend. Myself I am more shocked to see how many people believe notions without evidence presented to them.

The right question, imo, to get an estimate where we are with mobile targeting is to ask is which parameters have 1) gained traction with advertisers & 2) have given them a higher CTRs. Nobody has nailed mobile targeting as it's pretty hard problem to get progress on.

Whatever JumpTap did to get "three times as much clickthrough compared to ads in competing networks" is great work. I'm pretty excited to hear more details on tapMatch in the weeks to come.

Re: What iPhone effect? Some mobile industry insiders are still in the dark

matthaus — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:26:34 -0000

Michael, you could have guessed that I'm actually European. Also: I've been involved in projects like getting on a carrier deck - you don't need to explain concepts like premium mobile to me. You are exactly proving the point of the article.

Re: Mobile app developers fire back: Nokia sucks!

matthaus — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:30:20 -0000

You probably neither attended GamesBeat nor did you follow our coverage. The gaming industry disagrees with you.

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/11/more-details-emerge-on-htc-android-phones-and-the-device-hype-market/

matthaus — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:34:26 -0000

You are right on spot in seeing a shift of power in the mobile eco system due to the rise of apps. Many folks assume that the rise of apps - and the related startups - will continue. So did I until this year's Mobile World Congress. What I'm wondering about now, though, if apps have made mobile operators more powerful. Again, I will share my views in the next post.

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/11/more-details-emerge-on-htc-android-phones-and-the-device-hype-market/

matthaus — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:21:17 -0000

Merill Lynch and Morgan Stanley think that this disruption will not happen in the next 2 years. Things appear to get more tricky, though. There have been some very pragmatical debates around voice/data business models at this year's Mobile World Congress and some folks think that there will be industry fights around this as early as in 3-6 months.

To me the Skype iPhone app is speeding up this issue. I will share my views on it with my next post. In contrast to most tech blog commentators I'm not sure that the likely success of the Skype iPhone is good for startups.

Re: Behold, marketers — some iPhone numbers you can work with, finally

matthaus — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:13:41 -0000

Hmm, I talk about users, not devices.

Admob refers to about "15 million mobile Web users for Apple in the US" & I talk about "Apple’s mobile user base" & "number of users that app actually reaches". I took users because the comScore data refer to users.

The 22.5M on devices seem to be right. Besides Admob Greg Yardley over at Pinch Media also comes up with his estimate of 22 to 23 million devices running apps.
http://www.pinchmedia.com/t...

Re: Behold, marketers — some iPhone numbers you can work with, finally

matthaus — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:21:45 -0000

@Allen, Jonathan.

Will follow-up with comScore on that. If you got any more questions, let me know.

Re: I’ve moved to San Francisco, centre of the Mobile World

matthaus — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:58:45 -0000

To further your point Ewan I nominate 3rd Street, San Mateo, as the mobile startup capital of the world. Every time I'm there it seems you can walk into any building on the street and you find some mobile startup in it.

As far as your CTIA-MWC comparison, Stephen, I would agree with your suggestion that MWC was stronger . However, for the mobile consumer market I think both the CTIA and the MWC are increasingly irrelevant, based on feedback we hear from US developers and startups. Simplified, the way they see it, attendance at these events doesn't get them closer to the Apple App Store. Apps and app usage has such a big impact on the US mobile industry in the moment. Take for example the engagement data comScore came out with today. Among others the data suggests that an average iPhone user is more engaged with retail sites than an average internet user (http://venturebeat.com/2009.... That's big news. Is this a sign of mobile commerce taking off ? Will we see more mobile advertising around transactions ?. Being in Europe in the moment I find few commentators get the relevance of news like that, naturally, as questions like these touch few businesses around here.

Good move, Ewan. Matthaus from VentureBeat

Re: Behold, marketers — some iPhone numbers you can work with, finally

matthaus — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:46:13 -0000

Sure. As I say we are still talking estimates here. And one can refine any model with additional assumptions. Related to your argument, for example, according to Greg Yardley from Pinch Media (an iPhone analytics company) less than 5 percent of downloaded iPhone applications are kept longer than a month. I just did not want to go too deep with parameter discussions like this in the piece. Still, these comScore numbers are pretty useful, imo.

Re: Nokia aims to prove there is mobile demand beyond the iPhone

matthaus — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:35:30 -0000

Agreed. We are aware about some innovation happening on the battery front and will write about it here at VB in the weeks to come.

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/24/report-android-iphone-taking-everyone-elses-market-share/

matthaus — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:49:48 -0000

I'm not sure what "same league" means to you.

We had a mobile OS debate here a couple of weeks ago where I tried to explain why we at VB embrace some OS (iPhone, Android, possibly Symbian in time) and some others (Windows Mobile) not. It's simple: some OS and their devices have usage patterns which enable certain business models mobile developers care about. We report on what OS gets a developer a lot of clicks because he may consider choosing advertising for monetisation. We report on what OS gets a lot of clicks because this usually means that related KPIs look good on the reporting sheets of VC-funded mobile companies. We will report on any OS which is good for ventures and less so on any which is not.

Am I being helpful ?

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/24/report-android-iphone-taking-everyone-elses-market-share/

matthaus — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:39:46 -0000

These numbers are not more skewed than anybody else's in the space, quite on the contrary. All mobile data has a couple of asterisks to it if one wants to understand its meaning. Admob's methodology is briefly explained on the last page of the report if you are interested. Few folks in the space are as transparent as them.

If someone's a mobile developer & bets on mobile advertising for monetisation this is the best data you can get to track the market for various reasons I will not go into now.

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/24/report-android-iphone-taking-everyone-elses-market-share/

matthaus — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:45:10 -0000

@Ryan. While you are logically correct, your doubt is ungrounded. I've double-checked most of the mobile data out there & discussed it with the folks creating it and I can assure you that the Admob data is among the 4 most reliable sources you can get & is actually the best source on some things.

The carriers don't publish any data like this - even though they would probably know better. Also quite reliable companies like Comscore or Nielsen use extrapolated panel methods which usually lag in its relevancy up to 4 months. They are better at many qualitative statements. Still Admob data has got a relevancy advantage as its data is usually more "fresh". Also, Admob is probably the best company to get any meaningful data on off-deck traffic. The company probably sees the biggest chunk of off-deck traffic from any players out there.

Hope that info helps you to come to your own conclusions.

Re: The crux of the mobile developer conundrum: Forget the 99% without iPhone

matthaus — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:27:50 -0000

Hey Ewan, just feel like beating the same drum like I did recently at Enrique Ortiz' blog couple of days ago.

What you are missing is my confusion around the app store model hype right now.

Based on my exchanges with VCs/operators and observations (MWC) in recent weeks I find there is a hype around the app store model among the startup community which has little economic justification. This is a tough year for mobile startups and there’s little on the app store front which can change that for them.

Mind you, I understand the enthusiasm of startups when they get into the Apple app store. At VentureBeat we get companies telling us every week that even though they’ve got 5% iPhone users they make up 30%-70% of the actual usage of their service. Getting into the app store is a powerful emotional moment of success for startup teams. VCs, however, have all seen this effect for months and it’s old news for them. To get more funding, startups rather need to answer the question “what’s next ?” VC funding into the consumer mobile segment has decreased in the last 9 months or so. Pitches based on the app store model rarely work, from my observations. If you present numbers like "if you sell 50,000 over 6 months you've made £349,500. Give 30% to Apple and you walk away with £249,650" - that's a possible Angel or "lifestyle" investment.

Pretty much anyone going for a company which may get funds from a VCs needs to look to develop their stuff independent of platform concerns. Based on my talks at MWC I don’t see how the app store model really changes the operator business in the next 12 months, either. Mind you, that may be my confusion (again!), though, as I continue to be surprised how different views on issues like this are in this industry ;) I talked to 6 operators and they all see different things happening and all react to these things differently. What I see, though, is that the business of device makers is changing. Their pitches to operators have become different, I’m told. “My device increases the sales of your data plan via apps/MSN” is becoming a winning formula for some device makers and their competition has to react. This segment of the industry will change a lot this year, imo.

Just my 2 cents.