{"id":5210,"date":"2010-08-24T16:20:39","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T21:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/cote\/2010\/08\/24\/developer-relations-for-phones\/"},"modified":"2010-08-24T16:20:39","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T21:20:39","slug":"developer-relations-for-phones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/2010\/08\/24\/developer-relations-for-phones\/","title":{"rendered":"Developer relations in your pocket"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Phones\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The telco ecosystem is finally waking up to Microsoft’s great epiphany of the 80’s and 90’s: it’s all about developers.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of this when one of my high school alums Tweetered me<\/a> about Motorola buying 280 North<\/a>, makes of Cappuciono, an Object-C inspired app framework<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While I can’t say I’ve really every heard of anyone wanting to do more<\/i> Object-C (like) coding, it highlights the fire under the collective back-sides of handset makers, carriers, and others in the telco space who’re seeing the developer ecosystems around Apple and Android disrupting their billion dollar revenue streams.<\/p>\n

“…well I am now<\/em>!”<\/h2>\n

\n

Every technology need a parade of “killer features” to drive customers and for decades voice is what telcos offered. Remember all the “you can hear a pin drop” ads? While I might yell out “Bula Vinaka, Beachside!”<\/a> each time AT&T drops my iPhone call, voice isn’t much of a killer feature anymore. There’s texting, of course, which while heavily used<\/a>, is quickly becoming another undifferentiated feature (read: difficult to make easy money from in the face of cut-throat pricing from competition).<\/p>\n

The App Economy<\/h2>\n

“Apps” are where it’s at now. Thanks to several years of advertising from Apple around the iPhone and the follow-on of Android, consumers are expecting their cellphones to be small computers. Just as with traditional computers, the availability of applications – killer apps – drives interest and buying behavior of the platform, here, various “smart phones” – soon just be “phones.”<\/p>\n

Little wonder, then, that you’d see people like Motorola buying their way into application development. There’s a long way to go to build up a healthy and effective developer relations program, but having the actual technology – along with the talent and brand – is the necessary start. The existing cultures are a tremendous hurdle – the corporate structures are not really built around the slippery-slidey world of software and existing revenues are so stupidly massive that it’s easy to have a “what, me worry?” mentality.<\/p>\n

Telco arms-dealers like Alcatel-Lucent are working on their own platform<\/a>, and I’d expect to see more telco ecosystem folks – handset manufactures, telcos, equipment vendors, etc. – try to buy their way into, well, software.<\/p>\n

Disclosure:<\/b> Alcatel-Lucent is a client.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The telco ecosystem is finally waking up to Microsoft’s great epiphany of the 80’s and 90’s: it’s all about developers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,23,36],"tags":[51,76,463,506,514,515],"class_list":["post-5210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-marketing","category-programming","category-the-new-thing","tag-280-north","tag-alcatel-lucent","tag-ma","tag-mobile","tag-moto","tag-motorola"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}