Blackberry Application for XIX Commonwealth Games

The Commonwealth Games were first held in 1930 as the British Empire Games in Hamilton, Canada. The event was renamed as the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954, the British Commonwealth Games in 1970 and from 1978 are named as the Commonwealth Games. The  Games are held every four years in which all the member nations and territories of the Commonwealth of Nations participate in a multi-sport event which features competitions involving thousands of elite athletes. The Commonwealth Games are one of the world’s largest multi-sport events.
The vibrant city of New Delhi, home to 14 million people, will be hosting the XIX Commonwealth Games from 3 October 2010. This will be the first time India has hosted the Games and only the second time the event has been held in Asia (Kuala Lumpur in 1998 was the first).
The logo itself is in an invitation to every person across all divides – Indian and Commonwealth - to let go of themselves and participate in the Games to the best of their abilities, in the true sprit of the Games.

Come Out and Participate

With a vision to make this dream successful wherein every person is able to participate and Cheer for their respective countries and sportsperson, Endeavour – The Mobility Company, has developed “CWGames” Mobile Application to facilitate the sharing of experiences of Commonwealth Games 2010.

The solution would help visitors, fans and attendees of Commonwealth Games 2010 to keep themselves updated with the latest happenings in the Game Village comprising of

Medal History            

 Access to the details of records established in the previous CW Games sorted by Game, Sport, Event and Country. The user can also view the latest results from various sporting events during the XIX Commonwealth Games as it progresses.

Event Schedule

The application will provide detailed schedule of events along with information related to various games and map view feature to facilitate the visitors in locating the venue in Games Village.

Cheer My Country

The users will be able to cheer for their country by playing Cheer Sounds and voting for their respective nations. They can also save new and innovative sounds which would be then available to other users to use as Cheer Sounds.

Commonwealth Photos

The application allows the users to take pictures of their athletes as they perform share, upload and share their experiences with their friends and colleagues.  This ensures access to latest happenings around the Game Village even in cases when the user is not physically present.

In Summary, CWG Mobile application provides blackberry users to get all the latest updates on Commonwealth Games 2010 along with enriched interactivity such as cheer country with excellent sounds, upload/share CWG photos & messages which are Unique and Entertaining. This application provides details about the past history, guide maps to events venue, latest Medal standings and Event Schedules. The Voting for the Favorite message/sound of the day feature allows the user to Live Through the CWG Games. Stand a chance to win BlackBerry phones by simply uploading your photos and cheers! 

Rahul Aggarwal, MD, Endeavour Software Technologies, said the CWGames Blackberry application will mark a dramatic shift towards how people participate in the games and share their experiences with fellow members. According to him this application will provide a unique experience and set new standards for the Games to come. "We are excited about having this application available exclusively to Airtel BlackBerry customers and the value that it would bring to the visitors of Commonwealth Games," he said. 



Endeavour Software Technologies is a niche mobile solutions services company since 2002. The company offers Technology Solutions geared towards building Enterprise and Consumer Mobility Solutions for various verticals including Healthcare, Finance and Banking, Manufacturing and Supply Chain, Consumer Oriented Organizations as well as market research, publishing and PR firms.

Mobile Ad Networks: What's there for startups?

Though the well accepted industry definition of "Mobile Ads Networks" as found in Wikipedia and MMA includes SMS/MMS advertising (which also happens to be more than 90% contributor for MobileAd revenue) but let us not confuse this topic with SMS advertising/spam and rather focus on companies that use the mobile web to deliver targeted/untargeted ads as ad impressions on mobile websites or inside mobile software applications (eg. iPhone apps).


It's interesting how iPhone apps and the significant increase of the use of mobile internet in general has given rise to a booming industry in Mobile Ad Networks. Two such prominent names which come to mind when we talk of Mobile Ad Networks are Admob and Inmobi (A Bangalore start up that has received 2 rounds of funding). Admob serves 7 billion ad impressions on iPhone applications and the mobile internet PER MONTH.

The entry of big players such as Google and Apple clearly indicate a massive trend and that there is something lucrative about this rapidly growing industry. Google acquired Admob for $750m and Apple soon followed with acquisition of Quattro Wireless for around $275m. Not that this has been the only acquisition in this space. The rise of in-app ads has led to a rapid expansion of the space since 2007, when AOL acquired Third Screen Media, Yahoo picked up Actionality, Microsoft bought ScreenTonic and Nokia acquired Enpocket.

In spite of this industry being ridden with plenty of investor money through M&A activity there are very few start ups that are trying to capitalize on this trend? There are currently only about dozen significant companies GLOBALLY doing what Admob and Inmobi do. Why? We would expect "me too" companies to crop up by the dozen every week, but that seemingly isn't the case. 

The reason is because this is a tough market. Running Mobile Ad Network over-the-top is a rather difficult game, and Operators have several tricks up their sleeves which make Mobile Ads lot more attractive, effective and acceptable, if you work with them. This is what makes lives of Startups bit difficult, than what it would be with just over-the-top MobAdNets.

Admob

Admob, was the pioneering company that gave shape to this industry. It was founded in 2006 by MBA student Omar Hamoui at Wharton, part time while he was studying. It is amazing to see that something that he started from his dorm room eventually sold to Google for $750m. 

Great article again by mobithinking and an interesting interview with founder Omar Hamoui by Fast Company, puts this deal in perspective.

InMobi

Inmobi, a Bangalore start-up (2007) was formerly known as mKhoj. The mKhoj business model wasn’t working, so the founder Naveen Tewari quickly noticed in 2007 how Admob was making waves in the west. mKhoj cleverly copied Admob’s model and rebranded as Inmobi. While Admob was busy monopolizing the western world, Inmobi used the ‘reverse market strategy’ where they tested developing nations like India, Bangladesh, Far east (Indonesia, Thailand etc) and slowly took over as the leading player in Asia. They have recently (October/November 2009) entered USA and England to cash in on the huge constant increase in Smartphone use, especially iPhone and Android. 

What is there for startups?

These success stories do lead us to think that there is no scope for start-ups now, big players have already entered the industry and that we are too late. But that’s not the only point. As Founder and CEO of Inmobi, Naveen Tewari, said, “The numbers of people that need to get into mobile advertising are far more than the number of players that exist”. 

However, this isn't a nascent industry either and unless one has a tremendous differentiator, or an absolutely novel business-model, the first mover advantage isn't there, and you can only compete in offering bigger commissions or lower CPI. Some of the key factors which a start up needs to watch out for, include

• Inspite of massive increase in inventory for advertising made possible by launch of Appstrores, there aren’t enough advertisers yet.
• over-the-top Ad Networks are soon expected to be surpassed in terms of effectiveness and click-thru's for Operator support AdNetworks, thanks to things like DeepPacketInspection, which is becoming omnipresent quite fast especially for high growth mobile-internet markets
• the biggest challenge in building a formidable network is in "seeding" it. That takes deep pockets, strong execution capabilities, existing traditional networks/channels and fighting off biggies isn't easy. 

The bigger players have an aggregation of thousands of publishers which may not be available with a startup but still there are 1.1million mobile sites out of which Admob’s total publisher list is around 15000 (including iPhone apps). Inmobi has around 2000. Though not all of these 1.1 million websites are high traffic ones, but then there is a big difference between 1.1m and 2000.

Here are links to some of the interesting articles I found on this topic

• Article by VC Circle 
• A Video - only the first half seems relevant 
• How the iPhone built the mobile ad market, even as the rest of the economy tanked 
• Mobile Ad network directory 
• Rob Jonas Interview (ex-googler who joined Inmobi in late 2009) 
• Great article on how Apple swallowed up Quattro just before releasing the iPad. This article shows that Apple know the industry is going to be huge. 

How can a start up compete? 

Let us start with looking at companies like Smaato who work as “Ad enablers”.

Ad enablers allow Ad Networks like Admob Inmobi etc to use their (the enablers’) inventory. Smaato for example has relationships with thousands of publishers. With a simple API, Admob, Inmobi or any start-up can have access to Smaato’s thousands of publishers. This works on a revenue share model with smaato out of the total CPC/eCPM. 

So since we have established how easy it is for an ad network start-up to get access to inventory, the only missing part of the equation is ‘advertisers’. With some of the most popular brands on your inventory list (ebuddy, bollywood mobi sites, zedge, fring etc), advertisers/brands will be so much keener to sign up and advertise with your start-up. Doesn’t all this seem too simple?! Or am I missing something? 

Of course the question is if a start-up use Smaato and have their inventory, Inmobi will have the same plus more. So why would the advertiser/brand not chooseInMobi? 

Simply because the advertiser/brand doesn’t know better. This is a very new sector. Brands will probably just try out a start-up if it seems professional and have a decent publisher list. They don’t know that Inmobi has way more. Maybe I am wrong? 

The point to note is that if people like Smaato are really filling the niches that are hitherto ignored by the existing players, then that's a perfect startup situation.

The sinker

Before I close this article I would like to share the latest news which has come from Apple and which I am sure will put lot of startups further in the back bench is the strange move by Apple. Apple have warned app developer to avoid Location based targeted Advert. It’s little strange because 

1) Many believe that Location sensitive advert is next big thing 

2) Apple them self own an Add company now 

3) Loopt do exactly same thing (via cell ID triangulation) but they were allowed to present at WWDC'08  

I wonder what caused the change of heart?  Is it because they want to have exclusivity on LBS Adverts on iPhone??

The iPad Factor – Impact on Consumer and Enterprise Mobility

Vinay Shukla analyses the impact of iPad

Anyone would fall in love with iPad, Apple’s new innovation, when it was announced on Jan 27^th. I was even more excited to see that Steve Jobs chose one of our partner application ("Seven Wonders") for demonstration while launch. Endeavour is New7Wonders mobility partner and assists N7W in enhancing its mobile digital marketing space.

Steve Jobs has been dreaming about tablet device for long time now and I think this is the right time to launch it because the entire ecosystem for this device is ready. Why? According to Tal Kerret Group, 65 percent of the 2 billion apps downloaded from Appstore are games. Due to high retention rate of gaming applications on iPhone and seemingly demand for e-books applications on Appstore and Kindle, iPad becomes just icing on the cake for already popular iPhone and iPod Touch devices. There is already an infrastructure available for all the 3 powerful features highlighted by Apple e.g. e-books, games (thanks to its LED powered screen!) and rich media. Launch of iBooks opens new opportunities for developers to mobilize rich digital content on iPad. This would drive a demand for music, rich media (audio/video) and messaging applications.

In short, iPad as iPod Touch and iPhone would also be driven by “applications”.

With 10 hours of battery life (good but is that enough as compared to other mobile gadgets in the market?), I see a huge demand among the youth specially students as it provides iWorks, internet, a user friendly keypad.

On enterprise side, everyone was expecting an announcement for new OS release (v4.0) with multitasking capabilities from Apple. Apple wants us to wait! The good thing is that iPad is powered by iPhone OS so any future updates on iPhone would also apply to iPad. This makes enterprises to adapt new device without much hassle from maintenance point of view. Enterprises would have to deal with supporting iPad any way as when it is shipped in 60 days people will start bringing iPad to corporate networks and this would open up demand for its support in corporate infrastructure e.g. mobile device and user management, integration with mobile middleware platforms etc. Boxtone, MobileIron, Good may be rushing to grab the opportunity to become forerunner in this space.

The GPS feature and user friendly bigger interface of iPad particularly opens adaptability in verticals like CPG, healthcare supply chain, retail, inspection and audit, compliance for mobile staff to use this platform as sales force automation tool. Apple has made this simple by announcing accessories e.g. casing, keyboard, dock etc along with iPad.

Apple claims to ship 10m devices by end of this year 2010. How much they succeed we would see in due course!