Android Advisory Board Follow-Up

I wanted to post a brief follow-up to the Advisory Board Assignment from a couple days back about Android. First, a GIANT THANK YOU to everyone for all of your insightful and well thought our replies. You really provided some amazing feedback - you guys never cease to amaze me with the great stuff you post. So again, Thank You! And feel free to keep posting if you have more ideas.

To get my current thoughts and some feedback, read on after the jump!

Android: The Operating System Android is a compelling platform, and it is pretty clear that it definitely has its supporters. It does a lot of things really well, in some cases better than the competition. It also has a lot of potential. Like all devices it has its foibles (512 MB? In this day and age?) but every device has its problems. I’m still not convinced that this device will appeal to the larger consumer base the way iPhone does, but it certainly seems a good fit for more technologically oriented users. Bottom Line: It’s a very good OS, especially for technologically oriented folks, and might be able to capture the interest of the general public. Android: A Development Environment As a platform to develop for, it offers a ton of great opportunities. There are some really neat things we could do with this device. On the other hand, the pitfalls of an overly open system that we’ve experienced first hand with mobile devices in the past remain. I am not sure that these dangers are enough to stop us, but I think people underestimate the amount of frustration they’ll feel if, thanks to massive variation between devices, the software doesn’t work the same on every Android and/or won’t work at all on their device. This will likely happen to some extent. Bottom Line: It has some great tools for developers, but the openness of the system could come back to haunt us. Android: Market Penetration I think it’s likely that Android will achieve pretty strong market penetration as time goes on. The reality, however, is that in a year since its release and all the associated hype, this hasn’t happened. No matter the “whys” of it, the fact is that it hasn’t achieved the heavy adoption people expected. This might simply be a matter of “needs more time/better devices” but based on history, it also might be a matter of “Tech people love it but the general public isn’t sold.” Bottom Line: One way or another, I think we’ll end up seeing a respectable number of Android devices - enough penetration that it could support a decent base for an application. Android: As a (Third Party) App Phone I have no doubts about the Android as an “App Phone” since Google is sure to fully outfit it with incredibly awesome software. What I remain unsure of is whether people really will adopt it as an App Phone for third party applications in the way they have the iPhone today or the Palm/WinMo in the past. This is immensely important to us. As much as we appreciate and need our existing customer base, new customers make up the majority of our annual income. That’s the reality of the business. When we adopt a platform we need it to bring in new customers. Bottom Line: The jury is still out. We know our existing customers are ready and willing to get our products for their new Android phones. We just aren’t sure how many Android folks who don’t already use our apps will go out and buy them. This is true on any platform, but the weak showing of the Android App Store to date makes use leery. The Very Bottom Line What does all this mean? It means that I’m feeling stronger about the Android as a good software market. Many of my concerns remain, but based on new information and your feedback, I’m less unsure than I was.  If nothing else, I really hate to see all of our long time Windows Mobile users forced to go out and use an inferior product. :) “Blah blah blah - Will there be a version of eWallet for Android, and when will it be out?” Sorry. These are two questions I’m not going to touch. We learned *cough**mac**cough* the dangers of prematurely announcing our plans. And even if we started an Android version tomorrow, it’d be a good 6 months before you’d see it. As most of you know, we’re not hiring teams of underpaid overseas contractors to churn out our stuff - it’s all handcrafted in-house by a handful of the best developers in the biz. The result is top notch quality, but it does take time. So there you go - you’ve definitely swayed me and we’ll be sure to keep you appraised of any new developments! Thanks again for all of your input!

Advisory Board Assignment #3: Android!

Time for a new assignment for our advisory board! Today I want to hear what you have to say about Android. Let me start by laying out the pros and cons as I see them.

PROS

• It’s Google. Google = Success in the technology market right now which bodes well for the device.
• It’s a pretty nice OS from a user perspective. Nice UI. Decent look.
• It might be the “other phone” along with the iPhone.

CONS

• Every OEM can tweak the UI meaning an potentially nightmarish (and expensive) development environment.
• They aren’t as big of a market as the media makes them out to be. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10366193-94.html)
• Questionable support of applications: (http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/08/31/android.app.sales.low/) which may stem from the fact that Google is a app developer making everyone else a competitor.
• It isn’t clear that Android Users are Application Purchasers (http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/08/27/admob.july.2009/ ) (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/31/top-developer-reveals-android-markets-meager-sales/)

So - can you support or contradict the pros and cons? Do you have other pros and cons you’d want to add? How about personal experience with folks who have switched to or abandoned Android? As I’ve said, this is a platform we have not ruled out but I’d love to hear your opinion!

And as a extra motivation, if you post a response with your opinions TODAY you’ll be entered into a drawing for a special prize!

Rate It If You Hate It + In App Purchasing = Disaster?

There is trouble brewing in the iTunes App Store, thanks to the combination of two App Store features. The first is the pre-existing Rate It If You Hate It ratings prompt system, where they prompt for ratings when you uninstall. The second is the recent change that allows free applications to use In App Purchasing to expand functionality, effectively creating a trial version system for the store.

I’m not a fan of how they’ve implemented either of these, but more importantly, when you combine these two it creates a perfect storm of trouble! Read on after the jump for the entire story about the problem Apple has created…

Rate It If You Hate It

When you uninstall an application from your iPhone, Apple prompts you to rate it. One of the main reasons people uninstall is that they don’t like the application. This encourages everyone who hates an application to rate it and makes it VERY easy to do so - a single button push at the end of an unisntall.

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t do anything to encourage people who like an application to rate it. If you like the app, use it every day, and never uninstall, Apple never prompts you to rate it.

The end result is what I call the Rate It If You Hate It rating system. It’s an ugly system, and its effects are best seen in free applications where hundreds, sometimes thousands, of negative reviews get posted. Paid apps are protected from this (slightly) since you have to own an application to rate it - if you paid for the app there is a good chance you wanted it and like it.

But since anyone can download a free app, lots of people try it, find it doesn’t suit them, uninstall, and give it a bad rating. In many cases it isn’t that the application is bad - it’s just that this isn’t the right app for that person, wasn’t quite what they were looking for, or some other knee jerk response.

There are hundreds of amazing free applications with tens of thousands of happy users and two star ratings for this very reason.

In App Purchasing

The next issue is the decision to allow free applications to use In App Purchasing. With In App Purchasing you can download a free, limited version of an application, and if you like it you pay a set amount to unlock full functionality. On the surface this sounds great - in reality there are some serious pitfalls.

With this system, it encourages every developer to build their apps this way. The result is an app store where everything is free and you can’t tell how much applications actually cost. In addition, paid (via In App Purchasing) applications get stacked in the same lists as free applications making it tough to tell what is actually free!

There are other challenges as well but these are a couple of the big ones for customers.

A Deadly Combination

By themselves these two issues are pretty serious. Combine them and it could spell disaster. Suddenly every amazing paid application in the app store is getting its star rating tanked by the Rate It If You Hate It system. How are users supposed to gauge the actual quality of an application when they all have 2 stars or less thanks to this misguided “feature?”

It also opens up the rating system for tampering. Requiring ownership of an application helped protect paid applications from underhanded competitive practices. Few competitors are going to go out and pay people to buy your application for $10 a pop  just to give it bad ratings.

But what happens when it is free,  and they can get anyone and everyone who is willing to download it, uninstall, and give it a one star rating? I’d like to say that I’m just being overly paranoid but we aren’t new to the mobile software market. This is a very real danger.

Hey, Apple! I Hope You’re Listening!

I sure hope Apple is listening. It isn’t too late to avoid this problem. By making a few small changes, such as categorizing free applications that use In App Purchasing as “Paid Apps”, and only allowing people to review a free application that uses In App Purchasing after they’ve made the In App Purchase, they could prevent this. It won’t solve all the problems these two policies create, but it will certainly help to avoid a much, much larger problem.

User Reviews Matter!

There was a bunch of discussion about user reviews over at Just Another iPhone Blog the other day. Patrick was frustrated by reviews that either weren’t reviews, were wildly inaccurate, or were little more than an ad for another product. This sort of thing makes me crazy as well, but when I read the comments I was surprised by how many people don’t think this is a big deal.

In fact this is a big deal for consumers. To explain this, I wrote a new article for Just Another Mobile Monday that talks about the issue. Check it out for my views on the trouble with the way some application stores are handling user reviews and what it means to you guys!

And while you’re at it - Just Another iPhone Blog started a new series called “Desert Island Apps” where a guest explains which six apps she or he would take with them to a desert island. Guess who the first guest was! :) You can read about my desert island picks here!

Development Update

Since a lot of questions about platforms and release plans have come up in the other blog posts, I thought I’d take a second to write a quick update. I hope this helps to answer some of your questions! Keep in mind that in many cases I won’t be able to give specifics, but I will do my best to tell you what I can.

So, if you want some insight into what’s happening at Ilium Software, read on after the jump!

Wait! What? Why no specifics?

A few reasons. The main one is that there is a lot of stuff I’m not allowed to tell you. We have NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) with a lot of people, and the work we’re doing is almost always covered under one of these. I’m just not allowed to tell you some of the things I’d like to.

Also, I recently compared this job to doing improv. The nature of our market means that everything is changing all the time these days. Trying to get specific about something that hasn’t happened just causes problems when circumstances change (and then I can’t explain why due to the first issue I mentioned!)

A Note on Etiquette

I know people have some strong feelings about our products, and sometimes that comes out in blog comments. If I feel that a comment really isn’t constructive or isn’t civil, I will remove it. For a long time I never did this, but I’ve found that there are a lot of people who want to talk about these things but get turned off by too much “passion” so I want this to be an environment where they can be heard.

That said, if you have a “passionate” comment you’d like to make - just email me personally and I’ll reply to you. Send it to info@iliumsoft.com and put Attn: Marc in the subject.

So without further ado, on with the show…

eWallet for Mac: Let’s jump right in shall we? Here is the status:

• We’re still planning to release it!
• We already gave a version to a high level beta team to play with.
• I’m expecting a new build within the next couple weeks.
• I personally think it rocks.

This is quite literally ALL I can tell you right now. Again - we’re not posting this to convince people to hold out for it - we’re just letting you know what’s up!

eWallet for iPhone: We’ve heard your requests and we’re working on it! As you know we added Copy & Paste recently, and just last week we released eWallet Lite.

eWallet for Windows, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry: All of these platforms are getting attention right now. I can’t say much more but we’re pretty excited about what is in store and we think you’ll like the results.

ListPro for iPhone: Here is the rundown:

• It’s still in development.
• A version exists that we’re using in-house.
• Creating a good sync solution is still a VERY challenging issue.
• We’ve set our sites farther than the “read only” solution we talked about a long time ago.

Like eWallet for Mac, this is ALL I can say about this right now.

Windows Mobile: We did a lot of behind the scenes work getting the Windows Mobile applications ready for Marketplace and we’re quite happy with how that is going. We have additional updates in the works and are very happy with the platform (from a developer and sales perspective.)

Android: Look, I like Android a lot but so far it hasn’t proven itself as a strong market for software development. We already have a lot on our plate and developing versions of our products for other platforms is a HUGE task. It eats up lots of time and lots of money. As a result we need confidence in the platform if we’re going to embrace it. So far, despite its good points, I still don’t have confidence in Android. That could change but I’m still in a wait-and-see mode.

Palm’s WebOS: Palm is a fighter - I’ll give them that. Unfortunately, none of the things I’ve talked about in the past regarding Palm have changed, and although they are seeing moderate success with their application market, it has a long way to go before it’s a strong competitor. Like Android, I’m watching this one close but so far we haven’t committed one way or another on WebOS.

NewsBreak for : We don’t have plans for other versions of NewsBreak right now but the requests keep coming in so we’re leaving our options open!

ADDED 10-21-09 eWallet Web Companion: Yes, the EWC (as we’ve taken to calling it around here) is still in the works. We ended up delaying it for a number of reasons.  The main thing that happened was eWallet for Mac/ListPro for iPhone came back in-house. The resources only stretch so far. There are other reasons as well, inluding some work going on with the normal version of eWallet that could impact the EWC (in a good way!) So yes - we still want to make this a reality but it remains in Beta for now.

I’m sure I’ve skipped things people want to know about so feel free to post them below!

Thanks!

Marc

eWallet Lite for iPhone Now Available!

We just got news that eWallet Lite for iPhone has finally been approved! You can get it for free in the App Store today! eWallet Lite is exactly the same as eWallet except that it only supports one wallet and ten cards and IT’S FREE! Other than that, it offers every feature the full version does, from the 256-bit AES encryption to the many choices for customizing your cards to the rich security options. You can even try synching your information by downloading the Windows desktop trial here.

As you’re probably aware, one of the challenges of the App Store is that they don’t offer a method of providing free trials for customers. It’s very hard for a customer to drop $10 on something they’ve never used before. We tried videos, and while we like the results, it just isn’t the same as actually getting your hands on the product.

So we create eWallet Lite. Now I realize this won’t be a big help to our existing eWallet customers, but for people who like the looks of eWallet but really want to try it first, it’s a great solution. In fact, it’s a pretty darn good solution for people who only maintain a small wallet. If you’re only keeping track of a handful of passwords or other important information, eWallet Lite is a great way to do it for free! All the quality and security of eWallet at the best price around!

So if you know someone who has wanted to try eWallet but just wasn’t ready to take the plunge and buy it, let them know that eWallet Lite is now available!