Android Experience 2010 – Great Dutch event around the Android Ecosystem

Yesterday on March 24th I was fortunate to attend the first large event in the Netherlands around the Android platform, called Android Experience.

Android Experience was held in the Amsterdam Convention Factory and is not only aimed just at developers (like on the Android Dev Camp in 2009) , but more broadly centered around the whole Android ecosystem.

The Android Experience was hosted by the chairman (of the day) Humberto Tan, a well know sports presenter on the Dutch television and entrepreneur. In this article I will try to provide my event impressions, following the program structure from the Android Experience website,  and will mainly focus on the morning sessions with some highly interesting speakers.   

 

Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer 

1.  The importance of openness for innovation

Vincent Everts, a well known trendwatch in the Netherlands, is the first speaker on the Android Experience.

Vincent Everts, starts his presentation with a historical overview of important devices that he used, starting with the well known HP Palmtop 95LX and HP Palmtop 100 LX devices. Via the Psion Series 5, the introduction of the RIM Blackberry5000 series, various Nokia Communicator types and the iPhone, he ended in todays highly competitive mobile landscape.

He furthermore discussed the importance of the application stores, closely integrated with the mobile operating system. Another main point of the session was the open vs. closed operating system paradigm. Vincent Everts, really loves his iPhone and BlackBerry devices, both using the closed paradigm.

No wonder that one of the arguments that is in favor of future growth of Android devices is the open source character of the operating system. In addition HTC has shown with the release of the HTC Dream and the HTc Magic devices, that a powerful smartphone can be positioned in the market at a very sharp pricepoint, becoming a real threat for the socalled feature phones (like for example the Nokia 3000 series).

Vincent Everts makes the overall argument that “Android is the mobile operating system  for the rest of us” and the only two things that he misses in Android today is an “excellent hardware keyboard and a standby time of two weeks” (like in the Psion Series 5 days).

 

Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer  

2.  The mobile future is bright and open, the impact of Android

The second speaker at the Android Experience is Ed Achterberg, founder, CEO  and senior research analyst at Telecompaper.

“Telecompaper is a well respected, independent research and publishing company focussed on the telecommunications industry.”

Ed Achterberg leads us through various market trends and addresses the mobile landscape from different perspectives. With very detailed graphs and statistics Ed Achterberg showed for example the growth of mobile internet, voice calls becoming less relevant, or the variation of smartphone use between men and women. An interesting point was also the easiness of device configuration and time it takes at first use.

In interesting aspect of the presentation is the section where Ed Achterberg addresses the “misuse” of the term personal computer for the desktop at home. Home computer would be a more appropriate term, while the mobile (smart)phone is one of the most personal devices that goes with us everywhere, is the real personal computer.

I really like this approach. Compare for example the Quallcom 1GHz Snapdragon processor in the HTC Desire with my first “desktop” computer the Acorn BBC Micro. Ed Achterberg also addresses the growth of devices like netbooks and e-book readers that will have impact on the smartphone market. These type of spcialized devices could take away some functions from the smartphone.

A great point that Ed Achterberg raised was about the open source character of the platform, that not only has grown the Android marketshare, but also fragmented the Android share. The average end-user isn’t aware of these differences and cares for example about the use of applications. The argument here is that a some more closed, “controlled” paradigm of Google Android operating system, could be helpful to create a more uniform experience and quality across various devices and manufacturers.

 

Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer  

3.  The power of Android:  User experience is key

Mark Moons, Regional Director Benelux HTC, is the third speaker @ Android Exprience 2010.

Mark Moons explained some of the reasoning why HTC embracced the Android operating system is one of the founding partners of the open handset alliance (and HTC being the only device manufacturer).

Building a little further on the session with Ed Achterberg, Mark Moons explains that currently there are 7 mobile operating systems in the market. HTC is consistenly on a second place in terms of marketshare and the true leader in Windows Mobile and Android devices. The Android market penetration in the Netherlands is about 8.8%.

A significant part of the session is about the Android ecosystem. Mark Moons explains the necessity of a healthy ecosystem in which the different players challenge each other and drive true innocation. In this light both open- and closed ecosystem are addressed, as well as the opportunity to educate end-users and create a competitive advantage for retailers.  

The main conclusion is that an operating system with a healty ecosystem and an excellent user experience will be sustainable on the long term. According to Mark Moons, “Android will become the second operating system in the Netherlands within two years“. In addition you might want to check out a recent interview of Martijn Derks-Van Oers, Editor Mobile Cowboys, with Mark Moons (in Dutch).

 

Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer 

4.  Developing Apps: Doing business making money

Raimo van der Klein, Chief Exectutive Officer of Layar, is the fourth speaker on the Android Experience. Due to the fact this session overlaps with the professional field of innovation and entrepreneurship and my interests for business models, I was really looking forwar to this session.

Raimo van der Klein shares his vision, thoughts and practical experiences from a business (model) perspective about Layar, the well known and quite succesful Augmented Reality browser for the Android operating system.

Raimo van der Klein starts with the initial business plan and the start of Layar being one of five projects and the revenue model at that point in time. After a while the Layar management team experienced that this model simply didn’t work on the long term, and therefore they changed the strategy and reconfigured the initial business model a few times.  

Layar now aimes at becoming a platform (in contrast with the initial content focus) on top of which other developers can build their services, and in which Layar more or less takes care of a stable platform/environment, the distribution and the installed userbase and pre-installation on Android smartphones, for example the Samsung Galaxy S.

In this process or adapting the strategy and reconfiguring the business model some tough choices needed to be made. Think about the 110% full time focus on Layar (instead of the one-out-of-five projects approach), the choice show me the users compared to the shown me the money as an early exit strategy of the venture.

Raimo van der Klein furthermore addresses both the positive- and negative effects of the open source nature of the Android operating system. For example it is expensive to test backwards compatibility of the Layar platform across the different Android OS builds across the various handset manufacturers. On the other hand Apple doesn’t provide access to the video API of the iPhone, which slows down the Layar developments of analyzing video.

Finally Raimo van der Klein illustrates the platform choice with a new venture: TAB worldmedia, who connect augmented reality with outdoor advertising. I was fortunate to talk with Remco Vroom and Johannes la Poutre in the late afternoon, which was highly interesting.

Layar is an awesome example of busines model innovation, the organic nature of a business model and the hard choices that entrepreneurs sometimes need to make in order to gain their competitive advantage. On the other had it shows that if you have a clear focus, you can accomplish a lot !! Thank you Raimo for the great presentation.

 

 Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer 

5.  Banking with apps

The final speaker of the morning sessions is David-Jan Janse, Manager of Rabo Mobile, Rabobank Netherlands.

David Jan Janse shares some background information, about the steps of Rabobank in online banking and their first steps into “mobile” with for example the Rabofoon.

Internal research has shown that Rabobank customers who use Rabobank Online Banking also use the Rabofoon. In other words, there is clearly a need to do certain action from a smartphone, for example balance checks, while other actions you want to do from your pc.

With help of the Gartner Research Hype Cycle,  David-Jan Janse explains that Rabobank strongly believes that the mobile scenario is taking of and why Rabobank is investing in this area of their business, where payments and direct communication with customers are central strategic pillars.  

Starting the Rabo Mobile (Operator) business was a first step, and in collaboration with Service 2 Media Rabobank has developed:

1. An application for SMS payments on the iPhone;
2. An application for mobile banking on the iPhone;
3. An application for SMS payments on the Android operating system;
4. An application for mobile banking on the Android operating system.

David-Jan Janse addresses the implications of an open platfom and the resulting challanges for building applications for mobile payments.

Furthermore the Minitix virtual wallet was discussed, while in the late afternoon a press release was sent out that on the large Dutch social network Hyves payments could be made via the MyOrder system.

On the final slide of the presentation all attendees could read that the Rabobank mobile banking app for Android is released, and that they are looking for testers (which was also done with the iPhone versions).

 

Picture used with permission of Daphne Channa Horn, Independent Photographer  

6.  Planet Android App Challenge 2010

After the excellent lunch and highly interesting morning program, it was time  for the Planet Android App Challenge sponsored by Sanoma Digital, one of the largest online publishing houses in the Netherlands !

Gonny van der Zwaag, of Planet Android explained some background information about the Planet Android App Challenge and briefly introduced the three finalists together with Humberto Tan.

Each of the three finalists had five minutes to pitch their applications / business case for the Android Experience attendees, and a a jury of experts with the Planet Android team, Patrick from the Next Web and Axel of Sanoma Digital.

1. Kayma, with an application for the train travelling times;
2. BlueMediaLab, a developer for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android known from RADIO StreamItAll, Hotels near me;
3. Mediabunker, known from ServerAdmin iPhone app and ZoekMarktplaats app;

After a short deliberation of the expert jury, Mediabunker did win the first Planet Android App Challenge and the resulting advertising space in the Sanoma Digital network worth E20.000,- and the development of an application for one of the titles in the Sanoma Digital network !!

 

Final thoughts about the Android Experience

I would like to compliment the whole team behind the Android Experience (organizers, sponsors, mediapartners) with the amazing result of a succesful first edition of the Android Experience.

Furthermore different actors in the Android ecosystem were brought together under one roof. At first the handset manufacturers, like HTC, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Second a whole market of developers from the well known Layar to the less known (at least to me) Wong and the Only (which I found a brilliant tagline). And a lot of other partners that are actors in the ecosystem as well, like for example distribution channels, pr agencies, press or entrepreneurs in the mobile landscape.

The Android Experience even made it into the Dutch News “NOS Journaal op 3“, the only conclusion can be that the first edition of the Android Experience was a success.  Finally I would like to recommend a great photoset about the Android Experience of Daphne Channa Horn !!

Finally the Android Experience was a great place of creativity, innovation and inspiration, when you bring together entrepreneurial people with different backgrounds that are passionate about mobile technology and Android in particular. Android Experience 2011 here I come !