For more than ten years, Swedish phone camera software company Scalado has been spearheading imaging innovations, but few people outside of the mobile industry realize how much of an impact the company has had.
Scalado’s technology, which includes advanced software for taking, viewing, and editing pictures on your phone, has been placed in over 900 million mobile devices so far, the company announced last month. Its software landed on over 350 million devices last year, … Continue Reading
“Wine is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey” said Thomas Jefferson. Copenhagen-based Vivino helps you identify and locate your favorite antidote for future consumption. The company just received an angel investment from Skype co-founder Janus Friis as part of its strategy to go global.
You can use the free Vivino app to take a photograph of any wine label. Vivino uses image recognition to match the label against its database of … Continue Reading
It’s hard to get the famously phlegmatic Dutch excited but Mike Lee had a room full of them (and other nationalities) clapping and whooping Saturday in the style of an old-school preacher. Why? Appsterdam, Lee’s attempt to create a new home for app makers in city of Amsterdam.
When it comes to apps, Lee has form. He was a co-founder of Tapulous, creators of one of first successful iPhone games Tap Tap Revenge, although he … Continue Reading
Looking for an alternative to Silicon Valley? Developers in Amsterdam are set to launch an ambitious initiative this weekend that aims to transform the city into a new app developer hub. They’re calling it Appsterdam.
Why Amsterdam? According to Mike Lee, a Netherlands-based product engineer, the goal is to build close-knit community — similar to that of a developer conference like Apple’s WWDC — in a location that’s far less expensive, and easier to immigrate … Continue Reading
This article is part of the series “Conversations on the Global App Economy” which is sponsored by Nokia.
In developing countries, where large numbers of people don’t even have access to electricity, much less the Internet, ecommerce is something of a challenge.
SlimTrader allows consumers to shop for goods and services via text messages (SMS). According to CEO, Femi Akinde, who was just selected as a TEDGlobal fellow, it’s the first platform in Africa to … Continue Reading
Ciara Byrne
Why is a mobile phone number tied to a SIM card (and often a device) rather than a person? My sister lives in Brooklyn but has never owned a mobile phone (she still has an answering machine like in Sex and the City). However, she does have a habit of borrowing other people’s phones.
Something similar happens all over the developing world where the poorest people borrow phones and SIMs from friends and family as … Continue Reading
VentureBeat Staff
This post is sponsored by Nokia.
Mobile technology is spreading like wildfire in developing markets, and application developers often find themselves scrambling to keep up.
In Asia, mobile subscribers are growing at by 20 percent every year, and will total more than 3 billion by the end of this year.
Cue Nokia’s Series 40 Web App platform, the company’s bid to nail down emerging markets early in the game, while extending news, entertainment and … Continue Reading
Janet Rae-Dupree
This post was written by Janet Rae-Dupree and is brought to you by Nokia.
With more than seven million mobile app downloads in 215 countries, Mexico-based Inode Entertainment knows a thing or two about international software distribution.
Tip number one: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
When Jaime Enriquez and partners formally incorporated Inode in their hometown of Chihuahua three years ago, he took advantage of every opportunity that came his way. While … Continue Reading
VentureBeat Staff
It’s tempting for mobile app developers to focus solely on the United States when creating their products, but some developers are finding success abroad in markets that are less saturated and more open to quirky applications.
Take Amnesia Games’ Ninja Joe app. This addictive and retro-looking game asks users to help a character named Joe race across city rooftops in order to find four spheres and become a ninja. The graphics are simple but lovely, … Continue Reading
Devindra Hardawar
Those seemingly boring pictures and videos on your cellphone from concerts and sporting events may be worth something to media buyers — or at least, that’s the premise San Francisco-based Fizwoz is running with.
The company may be on to something. Since its launch at the end of January 2010, Fizwoz has landed 78,000 users from 161 countries who upload their cellphone media to the site in hopes of earning some cash. And it’s growing … Continue Reading
Ciara Byrne
Few tech startups actually save lives. Sproxil may be the rare exception.
The company tags pharmaceutical products in Africa with a scratch-off code (like the code you use to top up a prepaid cell phone). The customer sends the code in a text message to Sproxil’s product authentication service, which verifies if the product is genuine.
Sproxil just received an investment of $1.8 million investment from the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit global venture fund addressing … Continue Reading
Ilja Laurs
Guest Post
Ilja Laurs is the CEO of GetJar, an operator of independent mobile app stores. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.
Let’s say your app has achieved a top-ten position on Apple’s App Store in the U.S. A nice problem to have — but where do you go from there? There’s a whole world of international possibilities for you to explore, but most developers don’t know where to start.
By the end of this year, we’ll … Continue Reading
Peter Yared
Guest Post
[Peter Yared is the vice president of apps at Webtrends, which acquired Transpond, a social-apps developer he founded. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.]
The mobile operating system wars are a battle for the future of computing, not a battle for the future of phones. Former Morgan Stanley analyst and newly minted venture capitalist Mary Meeker highlighted this fact in her latest Mobile Internet Trends presentation. The key trend: Smartphones and tablets together outshipped PCs … Continue Reading
Tero Ojanpera & Terry Myerson
Nokia, the sponsor of VentureBeat’s Conversations on the Global App Economy, submitted the following open letter to VentureBeat.
On Friday Feb 11th our two companies announced a partnership that we believe will shake up the mobile phone market. Together Nokia and Microsoft are bringing to bear unparalleled and complementary strengths in global smartphone and mobile phone market share, hardware, software and services. Based on these strengths, we will build a new, global ecosystem that creates … Continue Reading
Matt Marshall
A hundred million devices isn’t cool.
You know what’s cool? Five billion devices.
Okay, I borrowed most of that line from The Social Network. But just as a fictionalized Sean Parker was urging Mark Zuckerberg to think way bigger, I think app developers are setting their sights too low when imagining the markets they can serve.
Last year, a tiny subset of world’s population — the early adopters, gadget-hounds — bought 100 million smartphones. These … Continue Reading
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