Filmed before Mobile World Congress:

Two years ago while I was working at dotMobi, I was one of the programmers working on the DeviceAtlas project, which launched at Mobile World Congress 2008. At the time, it was the largest launch I’d been involved in and it was quite a ride towards the end – when you’re launching to 60,000 people at the largest trade show in the world for your industry, the pressure is enormous.

So when Suura undertook to demo at this year’s Mobile World Congress, I knew we were in for a major project with a high workload. Or at least I thought I did, but if anything, I underestimated how much pressure there is for a small startup at this event. I’d like to say everything got done in normal business hours without stress, but I think everyone who’s ever even attended — let alone exhibited at — MWC would call me a liar! Not least of whom would be the me who found himself working away at some exceptionally unsocial hours during the lead-up to the event…

However, as in 2008, we learnt a lot in a short space of time, got an enormous amount done against rather high odds, and managed to get to Barcelona on time (and, as in 2008, we then slept for a week ).

For anyone who’s not seen MWC in action, it’s rather hard to describe. For a start, it’s big. Big as in sixty thousand people all walking, talking and working in eight halls (most of which are much larger than most aircraft hangers) spread over FIRA, a campus that’s larger than the entire Trinity College campus (FIRA is 250,000 m² while TCD is only 190,000m²):

It’s absolutely enormous, especially when you’re the first one of … Read the rest

A question came up on the boards.ie programming forum a week or so ago about whether to write apps for the iPhone or the Android platform. With Suura, we’ve been looking at what platforms to write clients for (and which to write for first), and it occurs to me that the data on what’s actually going on and what the hype is pushing are monumentally disparate. Believe the hype and the competition is all between Android and WebOS.

Thing is, all that noise is ignoring a few details. First off, both are tiny. In the telecoms market, even the iPhone is a niche player. Take mobile internet usage – yes, it’s growing, and at a rate noone expected, but look at how much of the overall total is made up of phone browsing compared to laptop browsing in these statistics released by Boingo in June this year:

Yes, it’s rising and I’d be surprised if it tailed off tomorrow, but it’s still only a small part of a niche market – don’t forget that the telecoms market is seeing 50% global market penetration at the moment and is looking to improve on that. That’s one mobile phone (of any type) for every two humans on the planet. Unless you’re talking clothes or food, odds are you’ve never even seen a commodity that sells that well, let alone a high-tech one. So the mobile internet is still quite a small part of the overall picture here.

But even setting that dose of perspective aside, and looking only at the niche of the niche, what’s the breakdown of devices? Again looking at Boingo’s statistics reveals an interesting story. Everyone says the iPhone was a gamechanger, but you really have to look at the figures to see how true that is:

And … Read the rest