July 2008 – Page 11

For banks, it’s still 1970.

At the start of the week, I authorised a bank transfer to send our sponsorship money down to the OpenCoffeeClub BBQ account and today we received notification that it had barfed. I’ve not had to send money to a company in another country before but I assumed as the banking systems are much the same … Continue reading “For banks, it’s still 1970.”

At the start of the week, I authorised a bank transfer to send our sponsorship money down to the OpenCoffeeClub BBQ account and today we received notification that it had barfed. I’ve not had to send money to a company in another country before but I assumed as the banking systems are much the same (and likely owned by the same company anyway) that it would be simple.

Apparently having the sort code and account number and transferring funds is not as straightforward as you’d expect and the systems the banks use don’t have the verification checking to let you know that the payment can’t be accepted. Wouldn’t it make more sense to do that verification check at data entry time? And more to the point – why the hell can’t I transfer money that way? The banks have unique numbers, the accounts have unique numbers within the banks – what’s the problem?

We’re a far cry from the digital future we dream of where commerce can flow unfettered. Even transferring money from my own bank account to another online is made more difficult if the second is in a different country. The quick solution, we’re told, is to post a cheque.

Yes, it has to be some sort of cruel joke.

The Gaming Market: time to break in?

Following on from earlier posts, it would seem that casual gaming on the iPhone is going to be big – and big for the consumer as opposed to the publisher. There are some incredibly fluid and fun-looking games like Rolando as well as the traditional games like MahJong. And if you like the idea of … Continue reading “The Gaming Market: time to break in?”

Following on from earlier posts, it would seem that casual gaming on the iPhone is going to be big – and big for the consumer as opposed to the publisher. There are some incredibly fluid and fun-looking games like Rolando as well as the traditional games like MahJong. And if you like the idea of using your iPhone like a steering wheel, there’ll be a hundred games like it – I’ve seen about 20 by now – and it makes the one or two which have an on-screen steering wheel seem innovative in comparison.

Market Size in terms of Potential Customers
If you went by market size, the mobile market as a whole would seem incredibly lucrative with a billion handsets being sold every year (or some equally incredible number). Only 10% of these are smartphones and the memory and resources on some of the non-smartphones mean that casual gaming is limited to mini-golf, snake and tennis games reminscent of the console games of the 1980s.

The PC industry similarly is massive with worldwide PC shipments for 2008 estimated to be nearly 300 million units (according to Gartner) but a large percentage of these will not be participating in the gaming market as they are put to work as ATMs, information monitors, shop tills and overpowered typewriters. The PC industry also has high expectations on the quality of games and for those people who want simpler games – it’s a flooded market and realistically you’re competing against Solitaire which is on every Windows PC known to man. That said – the cost of development tools has dropped considerably so that it is accessible to the hobbyist – look at Unity, XNA or any of a hundred other game engines and game development applications.

The handheld gaming market, dominated by the Nintendo DS Lite with 51 million units shipped (and the original DS shipped 20 million) and the PlayStation Portable with 37 million units shipped, would also seem to be massive but this is an expensive market to try to break into.

After that, the Console industry would seem most lucrative due to the numbers of units sold (the Wii has shipped 24 million from November 2006 to March 2008, XBox 360 has sold 19 million from November 2005 to March 2008 and Playststion 3 has sold 13 million from November 2006 to March 2008) but the costs for making games in those markets can be incredibly high (as we have discussed before) and you need separate toolkits for each console – driving the cost of development up.

Market size can’t, therefore, always be an indication of the number of potential customers – it has an effect, certainly but, as an example, the Nintendo DS market of 70 million has a potential customer size of zero if you can’t afford the costs of building a development team, training them and purchasing the tools required for game development on that console.

I attended an InvestNI event a couple of years ago where the consensus from a paid market research company was that the gaming market at the time was stagnant. It was too hard to break in due to the costs and the lead that other companies and other countries had was too big to break. I thought at the time it was probably not far from the mark especially where the mainstream consoles lie.

In contrast, newer handhelds like the iPhone, though with only 6 million shipped (and millions predicted for the next 6 months) has a much higher potential market size. This is because:

The tools for building are readily available and free (though there’s a Â£50 charge for the certificate)
Due to the App Store distribution, the customers are accessible and many of them are looking for new software to load
The hype machine is already built.

The proof is in the pudding. We have companies coming out of the woodwork to provide applications – whether these be games, IM apps, clients for their online services or just utilities. Unity (mentioned above) has also announced they will be making their game engine capable of creating iPhone games.

This is good, of course, because competition lowers prices and the consumer gets the break here. It’s a new platform, probably with 20 million potential customers by year end.

It’s hard to comment on the shakeup that Android and a new Open Symbian operating systems will bring to the market but it’s definite that the market is changing from the stagnant episode of the last few years.

iPhone 3G is almost here

Just arrived by Text from O2 UK. “As promised we are writing to you to keep you updated on the next steps to getting iPhone 3G. iPhone 3G goes on sale on the High street on 11th July 2008. We will be writing to you again before the 11th with details about how you could … Continue reading “iPhone 3G is almost here”

Just arrived by Text from O2 UK.

“As promised we are writing to you to keep you updated on the next steps to getting iPhone 3G.

iPhone 3G goes on sale on the High street on 11th July 2008.

We will be writing to you again before the 11th with details about how you could place your order. We do, however, expect demand for iPhone 3G to be very high so orders will be processed on a first come, first served basis so that we can be fair to all our customers. Orders will be limited to one iPhone 3G per customer.”

Interesting…

Roaming in the EU. And not in the EU.

I was not aware of this: In February 2006, O2 Ireland became the first operator to abolish roaming charges between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland â€“ introducing â€˜All-Islandâ€™ pricing for people travelling between the north and south. Roaming charges in Ireland were a concern for those living or working near the border, who … Continue reading “Roaming in the EU. And not in the EU.”

I was not aware of this:

In February 2006, O2 Ireland became the first operator to abolish roaming charges between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland â€“ introducing â€˜All-Islandâ€™ pricing for people travelling between the north and south.
Roaming charges in Ireland were a concern for those living or working near the border, who often incurred roaming fees inadvertently, sometimes in their own homes.
In addition, international roaming has been abolished for O2 Irelandâ€™s business customers between Ireland and the UK.

Of course, I have no idea whether I incur data or voice roaming charges because I’m an O2 UK customer and not an O2 Ireland customer.

It’s now a month to the big day and straight after that a two week cruise which will take in 6 countries in 12 days. I’ve been busying myself with getting FON set up so that I can find some free/cheap WiFi in some countries and looking at the roaming rates other than that. For the most part it’s going to be Â£3 a megabyte. For two of the countries at least it’s going to be Â£6 a megabyte.

Digging around, there’s the ‘Data Abroad’ Bolt-on which costs Â£20 per month for 10 megabytes and Â£50 per month for 50 megabytes. Seems like a winner and I’ll nab that when I migrate to my new contract.

Anyone got any EU and European-but-not-EU roaming stories?

Texting the USA for nowt.

Dave Merton over at Macsimum News put together this neat guide for sending free text messages to people in the US and Canada. Create a new email message. In the To: box, type 10digitnumber@teleflip.com. (1235551234@teleflip.com) Type a message and click send. The message will be sent to the cell phone with the number in the … Continue reading “Texting the USA for nowt.”

Dave Merton over at Macsimum News put together this neat guide for sending free text messages to people in the US and Canada.

Create a new email message.
In the To: box, type 10digitnumber@teleflip.com. (1235551234@teleflip.com)
Type a message and click send.
The message will be sent to the cell phone with the number in the To: box as an email.
For extra geek points, add the person’s number in the teleflip format to your address book so you can easily text them without having to remember their number!

This is interesting because of the email component – you can automate emails! You can set up alerts to email in the event of a service failure but getting them as a text message means you just need a phone (though admittedly with Push email coming along, who needs lo-li text messages!)

Maybe some of the smart telecoms guys can enlighten me on what would be the costs to run something like this in Ireland and the UK.

Ngmoco to target iPhone

From Gamasutra, Neil Young, former head of Electronic Arts (EA) Blueprint and Electronic Arts LA has jacked in the high profile job at EA in order to produce iPhone games at his new studio ‘Ngmoco‘. In the interview he describes the iPhone and App Store as a disruptive element in the ecosystem (my words) which … Continue reading “Ngmoco to target iPhone”

In the interview he describes the iPhone and App Store as a disruptive element in the ecosystem (my words) which involves several fundamental shifts from the way things have been done in the past.

…more than half the time the average iPhone is in use, it’s being used for something other than making a telephone call. If you think about that concept, that is a fundamental shift.

…from a performance standpoint, is pretty close to a PSP, but unlike the PSP, it’s got a touchscreen, accelerometers, a camera, it’s location-aware, it’s got all of your media on it, it’s awake with you, it’s always on, and it’s always connected to the network. So if you think about the types of games and entertainment experiences that you can build on a platform like that, it’s got to get pretty exciting pretty quickly.

…if you think about what Apple’s doing with the App Store, they’re really turning mobile on its ear. They allow you to control the pricing yourself. They’re taking a distribution fee for distributing your software, but they’re really allowing users to choose what to put on their phone and how they want to enhance their device. And that is a fundamental shift.

The company has three roles:

So commissioning, financing, and producing titles ourselves, that’s the first party. Then there’s the second party, which is looking to the independent developer community and asking ourselves, “What great ideas are out there that need to be funded and financed?”
And lastly, it’s a third party for people who don’t necessarily need our producing experience or our financing, but the opportunity to work with us within an ecosystem

As Ngmoco will be a publisher more than a developer, it allows them to spot interesting games that might want to move to other mobile platforms as they become available – migrating the software to Android or the new ‘open’ Symbian operating system when it appears. It’s all about spotting the intellectual property and getting it licensed and published in order to maximise return and providing their previous expertise in order to make the most of it. Potentially very profitable if iPhone sales estimates are to be believed (6 million iPhone 1.0 sold already, 14 million iPhone 3G predicted in latter half of 2008 and 24 million iPhone 3G predicted for 2009)

From what I can see, Ngmoco’s job will be mostly to introduce new developers to the cut-throat gaming market.

We changed the concept…

There are quite a few companies who are admirable. And I’m reserving this for older companies which have weathered for years – rather than new companies which haven’t really faced adversity. You have to look at IBM for their right-angle turn into becoming a crusader for open source. Apple for making a turn away from … Continue reading “We changed the concept…”

“We changed the concept,” says ASUSTeK Chief Executive Officer Jerry Shen in a Businessweek article.

…appointed Lee Kuo-kun, a professor from a local fine arts school, to be a consultant. The two meet every month at Shih’s office for coffee, green tea, and long discussions about aesthetics, philosophy, and technology. “All of life is art,” Lee explains.

I admire Asus. They’re one of the few ‘PC’ companies which seems to be working with the philosophy of making great products. Let me qualify this – I have an Asus eee PC 701 and I don’t like it. Most of my dislike is because the keyboard is too cramped and the touchpad/button feels a little cheap and, frankly, it doesn’t run the software I need from day to day. But that’s not to say it’s not a great product.

Mini-notebooks as opposed to Sub-notebooks seem to be the area where the market is going to take off. Why would you pay over a grand for a Lenovo when you can get what you need from an Asus for two hundred? I can understand a small sector of people who are still going to lust after and buy subnotes like the Air or the Lenovo Thinkpad X300 – but there’s a lot more potential for the Asus and competing products like the Everex Cloudbook, Acer Aspire One or the MSI Wind.

They’re clunky, they’re limited, they have holes and gaps but they’re cheap, they’re functional and their limited built-in storage really encourages you to back up to your USB stick or, better still, your server in the Cloud.

Asus released news on the Eee PC 903, 904 and 905 yesterday which look a lot better than the 701 that I have in a box somewhere.

It’s going to be an interesting space to watch (and I tend to pop along to Mike Cane’s blog for the news)

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