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During my time at Taptu, the mobile search and discovery service,  I was regularly reading reports and posts about the meteoric rise of new mobile devices, platforms and app stores. However, I would often find myself trawling Google for a specific stat that I read in a report but couldn’t find the reference when I really needed it – so I started collecting reliable mobile ecosystem statistics.  The sorts of things I snag are installed base estimates by platform, apps store data, advertising impressions by OS,  handset shipments etc…with references/links to the full report or article. Taptu also produced in-depth reports on the mobile “Touch Web” (the mobile web optimised for touch screen mobile phones). These reports include detailed category analysis of the type of sites and services flourishing on the mobile web vs the closed app environments. You can view the Taptu report here.
As and when I find new stats I’ll update the deck – hope it’s useful.

UPDATE : I’ve just added today’s Percent Mobile Stats – the most current deck can now be found on Google Docs here

I can never find these instructions when I’m setting someone up to test one of our Apps.
So thought I’d stick them here.

How to install the app:
1. Drag (or save) the 2 files attached to your desktop
2. Open iTunes
3. Double click the ‘filename’.app.zip file to unzip it
4. Drag both files (.mobileprovision and the ‘filename;.app) onto either the iTunes icon or Library sidebar.
5. In iTunes, click on Devices > iPhone/iPod Touch > Applications
6. You should then see all the apps installed on your phone. Ensure ‘App Name’ is checked.
7. Sync your iPhone/iPod Touch and you’re done
8. Now click on the App icon on your iPhone/iPod Touch and go play

And @Vero has provided simple instructions for finding a UDID on the Taptu blog here

Quick Refresher course on where LBS services are as of Oct 2008

Rummble

http://www.rummble.com

‘Mobile Local Discovery’  (Andrew Scott, Co-Founder, ex Playtext)
Award winning Mobile 2.0, MEX
User selected location – Feeds, photos, Google maps, basic listings, UGC reviews.
Friend invite via 50 Free texts or email.
Early stage development

Moximity
‘It’s all around you’ Austin based new start up (launched Sept 28, 2008)
Looks like a GPS Social Net – claiming to integrate your other social nets which beats having to find new friends or invite old ones. Find friends nearby, location based offers. Seems to be rolling out city by city and I love their use of Google maps for on their sign up page. Sounds pretty cool, and think it’s smart move rolling out city by city.

Plazes (now owned by Nokia)

http://plazes.com

‘Right place, right time’ (Felix Petersen, Co-Founder now head of social activities at Nokia)
Web based and appears to have SMS (but didn’t try this out)

Share your location (neat suggestions provided), updates, see who else is in the area. RSS, update to Facebook, WP, Blogger, good mapping and more – feature rich.

Tech crunch describes it ‘as Twitter with geotagging, points of interest, and social networking
features’ which is pretty fair IMO.

Buzz’d

http://buzzd.com/

‘What’s going on around me right now’
US Based new start-up, with local event UGC reviews, mapping and social nets.
MOMO award winner, just closed series A.

BrightKite
http://brightkite.com/ Currently invite only
Geo Social net with feed for status updates, photos etc..

The other major players have recently been extensively reviewed by Techcrunch. Covered in this review

• Loopt.com – mobile social mapping
• Whrrl (Pelago, funded by Jeff Bezos and T-Mobile))  – social net, google maps, mash up on the mobile
• Where/ Buddy Finder (uLocate) find locatin specific friends, shops, cafes, Zipcars, places listed on Yelp, petrol station and of course Starbucks (yawn)
• Limbo.com categorise users in to frieds, contacts (pulled in from native address phone book), members. Desk site is very weird with a games section. Hmmm?
• Zintin – Standford grads start-up, iPhone only. Seems to have started with the infamous scribble and shake app, which can then be shared on a FB like Wall but now morphing in to something else? Looks quite interesting.

Further reading:

LBS Primer by Tech Crunch is excellent http://tinyurl.com/4rsorr

Anatomy of a failure : lessons learned from failed start-up Meetro, excellent too. http://tinyurl.com/59ouwk

Andrew Finkle http://www.afpr.com/ – Social media blogger also has some great posts on this subject. http://www.afpr.com/

Had a wonderful lunch the other week with Vic Keegan from the Guardian and Mark Headley (too shy to have a professional web presence but can be found in his creative outlet here). Back in 2001 we worked together on Text Message Poetry – which was one of the most interesting projects I’ve ever had the privilege of being involved with. Looking back now and seeing how mobiles have advanced it seems a little primitive (we’re no longer restricted to 160 characters) but it’s still charming on many levels. I still recall bits of the winning poem from the first competition (it was so successful we ended up repeating it the following year).

txtin iz messin,
mi headn’me englis,
try2rite essays,
they all come out txtis.
gran not plsed w/letters shes getn,
swears i wrote better
b4 comin2uni.
&she’s african

This competition was a great example of how ‘restriction breeds creativity’ but this is at odds with the infinite nature of digital media…but I wonder if there restriction can be applied to digital media in other ways?  Perhaps mini sagas could be taken in to the digital world

Vic’s a real enthusiast for mobiles and during the conversation the topic of how do people get music on their mobile and I recalled seeing some research so bit of digging. According to m-Metrics in Jan 2008 a staggering 83% was sideloaded.

“83% of mobile music was sideloaded onto cellphones in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. M:Metrics also found that the second most common way of getting music onto mobile phones was to share it with friends via Blue-Tooth” but this was only at 12% in the most popular market.
Full details here