For over a year now,
we've been inundated with questions (initially), requests (later) and grunts
(lately) regarding WorldMate for the iPhone. Initially, it was simply
WorldMate's history - we've had WorldMate on Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian
UIQ, S60, S80, S90, J2ME, Windows Desktop, BlackBerry... people naturally
assumed we'd automatically do iPhone too. Later it was surprise - as it seemed
like the iPhone app market is a huge opportunity for developers - how come a
long-established and category leading brand like WorldMate isn't there?
On our CEO's blog he
explained our rationale. In retrospect, it's interesting to see how the iPhone
and our perception of it changed over time. In August 2007 he stated "What
the iPhone definitely isn't is a good business tool". In October 2008 he
asked users to petition Apple to allow us to do push, background
processing etc. to enable the Auto-updating and Alert functionality in
WorldMate Live. By then, it was clear to us that the iPhone is here to stay,
and that iPhone desire, even crave WorldMate - and that we can't ignore their
pleas. The comments we got ranged from enouragement - e.g. "I think
worldmate live is a great application and I'd love to see it on iphone"
to"I switched from BlackBerry, and not having WM is killing me."
But still we dragged
our feet. Why? the reasons above had much to do with it. Our pre-occupation
with Windows Mobile, Symbian etc. contributed too. But mostly, we were
concerned about the business model. You see, WorldMate Live is a $99/year
service. The propsects of selling in a market where the so-called leaders sell
$0.99 mini-apps is daunting. In January 2009, when we were examining the iPhone
App Store success stories a little closer in the post titled "iPhone, iTunes, iFart..." we asked people what
they thought we should do. We were encouraged to hear responses like:
"a high price
suggests higher value and differentiation from the low quality apps out there -
from seeing who's carrying iphones in the big cities, seems like there'll be
enough happy customers for the worldmate live app."
and
"If people are
willing to pay $.99 for crappy apps and odd sounds, imagine what they would pay
for an app that is actually useful and works wonderfully like WorldMate
Live."
These responses
marked the trigger for our iPhone development. But WorldMate Live is a BIG
system. We have an 8-person team working on it since January. When it's
released, it will arguably be the biggest, richest iPhone app out there.And in
the mean time, we still have quite a few dilemmas and debates. Some of which we
aired in public in March. At this stage, it seems like the
audience wasn't too appreciative anymore, and the comments we got were a little
less appreciative...
"What I think is
that you are very bitter... Now I have the iphone, as it is
in my opinion the better platform I now look forward to getting a product
similar to WM from someone else, it will now only be a matter of time..."
Last month, Apple
announced iPhone SDK 3.0. It doesn't let us do everything we want to be able to
do, but it's a huge step forward. By this summer, it will allow us some limited
push functionality, and management of paid subscriptions. For us, this is a
coming-of-age of this platform, and we want to be on it - ASAP.
The iPhone has
revolutionized the smartphone market in several ways. The most important one is
not technological or design-centric - it has to do with the marketing message.
Apple is focusing it on the availability of applications - stuff to do with
your phone beyond voice / SMS / Email. Everyone in the mobile software business
has been pleading with manufacturers and operators for years to do this. These
manufacturers built great smartphones, then marketed them as "camera
phones", "camcorder phones" (remember the Nokia 6620?) and
"communicators". In doing so they've been sending the wrong message
to their customers, and delaying the smartphone revolution. In a way you could
say that these companies they were not confident in their product. Maybe the
engineers and product managers unsderstood apps. The marketers didn't. Nokia
was not really sure that the 9300 is good for anything beyond communications.
RIM was not sure BlackBerries are really more than e-mail devices.
Apple is confident.
And with this confidence they set out to show the public that these devices
they've built can do all those "new" things. TV commercials showing
apps on the iPhone. Full-page ads showing just an iPhone with apps. Apple
retail shop-fronts with displays of hundreds of apps – can the message get any
clearer?
2 years ago, if you
downloaded an app to your smartphone, you were a geek. Now you're cool.
On top of this – the
iPhone is currently the best mobile platform for content consumption. Between
the great screen to the elegant and highly usable UI, a great medium was from
an ergonomic perspective. Regardless if what you're looking at is your travel
itinerary, a news article or a video clip – the iPhone is probably the best
mobile platform to consume this content, and competes well even with other
media – from paper through television to desktop computers.
So – what we have
here is a platform whose users see as a great medium to carry and consume
content on. Millions of business
professionals have turned it into their preferred tool. Their use of it
corresponds closely to our WorldMate vision – they carry their info, access it,
look up info they need in real time, and react to it - directly on their
iPhones.
Warranted – the lack of some key features
still puts it at a disadvantage – if we could push info to you, we'd be able to
provide you with the context-sensitive alert capabilities of WorldMate Live. If
you had a keyboard, data-entry operations would be easier. And we're still concerned
with app pricing, which makes it hard for us to get back the millions of $ we
put in the WorldMate Live system. But it's time we move forward – and that is
what we're doing. So it's not long now before we'll release WorldMate for the
iPhone. In the mean time we invite you to tell us what you want, what you think
and what you need. And if you'd like to be notified as soon as it's available –
just click here to register for that notification.
