Google staffs up to boost Android Market

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Google is hiring developers to create apps for the Android platform. In other words, the online search giant may be looking to become a sort of incubator for application developers and it has shifted a number of its own employees to boost the effort.

This is clearly aimed at reaching parity with Apple whose App Store holds more than 350,000 apps, while Google’s Android Market hovers around 100,000 applications. According to research firm Gartner, the worldwide app market revenue is set to top US $15 billion this year, which includes paid apps as well as those supported by advertising.

With paid apps on Android Market not pulling their collective weight, it’s expected that the majority of revenue from that channel will come from free, ad-supported apps. It does not help that Google has been slow to adopt in-app purchase mechanisms which pushed a lot of additional sales on Apple’s App Store as, according to research firm Distimo’s latest report.

Unlike the App Store, which allows paid apps to be distributed in all 90 countries it’s offered in, the Android Market has limitations that keep Android phone owners and developers from being able to purchase or distribute paid applications.

According to this Android Market support document, free apps in Android Market are only available in 44 markets while paid apps are available in 32. To be able to sell apps, developers must originate from an even more limited 29 countries. Strangely enough, Indonesia and Malaysia are two countries not mentioned anywhere on those lists despite the availability of free apps from the Android Market.

The global drive to hire application developers is apparently led by Benjamin Ling, a Google product manager, although more details are not forthcoming because the company declined the Journal’s interview request.

Google’s drive to promote its app store fits well with the company’s intention to boost the number of employees by 6,000. Currently the Mountain View giant has more than 24,000 staffers.

A research report from MarketsandMarkets shows that North America leads global mobile app revenue share with 41.6% but Asia leads in global downloads with 36%. When coupled with RIM’s outlook that 39% percent of smartphones will be shipped to Asia in the next few years, revenue from ad-supported apps may potentially play a much bigger part for app developers.

With free apps making up 60% of apps in the Android Market, Google may be poised to take advantage of the rising Asian smartphone market by distributing ad-supported apps and betting on click impressions. That is, unless it manages to figure out a less complicated model to allow global distribution and sales of paid apps.

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ValueFirst Raises 70 Crores, Plans Acquisitions

Messaging company, ValueFirst has raised 70 Crores (~$15million) from New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and The Headland Asian Ventures Fund 3 Limited (HAV3).

As per Vfirst, the funds will be utilised to fuel growth through acquisitions in India (and overseas) to offer a device and platform agnostic approach to its clients through offerings in SMS, Voice, USSD, WAP, Media and Apps.

The company recently changed its brand identity and earlier ValueFirst acquired CellNext, Tagg.in, invested in Indyarocks and had raised $6mn from NEA (Feb 2009).

Good timing? Well, the whole bulk SMS industry is shaken up owing to TRAI’s NCPR guideline

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Tech WWWorld- Google & Twitter Offer ‘Speak to Tweet’ Service in Egypt

Google partnered with Twitter to come up with ‘Speak to Tweet’ service that will enable people in Egypt to tweet using a voice connection (i.e. sans Internet, which has been blocked in Egypt now).

We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers ( +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855 ) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.[source]

IBM Launches LotusLive Symphony

IBM has launched LotusLive Symphony, new set of social collaboration tools in the cloud that allows you and your customers or colleagues to work on documents, spreadsheets and presentations – together. You can co-edit, organize and manage the creation process in real-time, using LotusLive Symphony’s Web-based tools.

Google Docs Adds Priority Sorting (+ New Features)

There is also a new view called Home. The contents of the Home view are controlled by you so that the content you access the most often is easier to get to. You can remove files from the Home view by right clicking the file and selecting Don’t show in home to hide them. And when you need them, these files can always be found later by selecting All items or using search.
You may also notice Collections have replaced Folders in the left navigation bar. Collections are designed to combine the best features of labels and folders. A file can live in multiple collections, just like with Gmail labels. Collections can also be stored hierarchically, just like folders on your desktop. And of course, collections can be shared, just like you can share docs. [source]

Samsung Galaxy Tab Sales

Samsung Galaxy Tab sales is not on the same lines as one would expect (after the success of Galaxy S).

“Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out. As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.”[WSJ]

Google topples Nokia from smartphones top spot

In the fourth quarter, phonemakers sold 32.9 million Android-equipped phones globally, roughly seven times more than the year-earlier quarter, compared with Symbian’s sales of 31 million, according to Research firm Canalys.[source]

Video:Technology: Phone Calls via the Internet

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Entrepreneurs In This Part Of The World [Valley Or No-Valley]

A couple of weeks back we asked Sarah Lacy of  TechCrunch and Satish Dharmraj, a valley based Indie-American investor a simple question: “how far in the future do you see a global web company emanating out of Asia (NOT JUST INDIA). Is herding nature gonna bring out another bubble? “.

Satish’s overall answer was, uh, a plain no. He went on to explain about the eco-system in valley (which is true, coz a lot of talent from Asia flows there), available capital in the valley (that’s the ‘herding nature’ isn’t it?) and its culture of innovation (one can argue on this, coz a lot of innovation comes from outside the valley too!) and then he reassured that he does not see a billion dollar web or mobile company emanating out of Asia.

Well, let us accept it: Satish probably you are right about entrepreneurship in India. And probably Asia as a whole does not have a chance against the valley, even though the same Asians have all the possibilities when they go and do it from the valley. And that you’ve never heard of Asian entrepreneurs before, and you do not see anything remarkable happening in mobile space in India/China.

Let us believe that things are gonna stay status quo. Hell, you haven’t heard about our small blog called pluggd.in either!

But if I were to believe some of the awesome stories a couple of big-big ideas materializing into finished products & successful web/mobile startups coming out from India itself in the last four years, then guess what: valley-or no-valley struggle for me is immaterial from entrepreneurship point of view. Even the growth of readership of entrepreneurs on pluggd.in strongly indicates the prominence of startup momentum in this part of the world.

Look, look at the graph. Look at the numbers and then talk.

I mean, how far are we really from building a billion dollar web/mobile business? Is Asian entrepreneurship community so far from the biggest one of the silicon valley? How remotely is a typical Asian entrepreneur placed from elements of innovation? Or is it just as simple as getting our techie brothers back into Asia and then doing Dim-Dim and Google story from here itself? (BTW China is doing that already – getting their brothers back!)

Capital – ah that’s where the problem is and probably our regulations undo ourselves a bit too.

But saying that a billion dollar web or mobile enterprise cannot come out of Asia, IMHO, is radically flawed and little about living in a fools paradise forever. And dear investors, with all due respect, you are at least a 1000 feet above the ground. See just the entrepreneurship community of India is blip-ping on your graph already, despite the lack of capital, angel infrastructure, likes of Ron Conways & Marc Andresseens in this part of the world.

How long will it take for us to reach the tipping point? Time is the only gap between you and us. Keep running!

What’s your opinion entrepreneurs?

Your article is awesome. It will go out tomorrow without any editing.

Cheers,
Arvind

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TRAI Extends NCPR Deadline to March 1st, 2011

We earlier shared the new TRAI policy on spam SMS, which is all set to create chaos among consumers (do read/contribute in this discussion). There is no solution in the market as to how all the e-commerce and other web businesses communicate with their audience.
Even Facebook has messaged its users to de-register from DND (Do Not Disturb) registry (they could have have asked its customers to register for only category 6 of NCPR which covers -Communication/ Broadcasting/ Entertainment/ IT by sending an SMS “Start 6” to 1909, but then given the timeline, opting out of DND is probably the only way to receive these messages).

TRAI has however  extended the deadline to Feb 10th March 1st (pdf).

Having regard to security audit of the website to be created for the purpose of these regulations and other processes involved, the principal regulations were amended on 14th December, 2010 and subsequently amended on 28th  December 2010. As per these amendments, the telemarketer’s registration had to  start from 15th January, 2011 and other operational provisions were required to be implemented from 1st
February, 2011. The telemarketer’s registration has already commenced from 15th  January 2011.

On 31st  January, 2011, DoT has communicated a fresh numbering series beginning with the number ‘140’ in place of ‘70’ number series. Communicating the same to all the Access Providers and carrying out the required changes would require time. Therefore, The Authority is compelled to change the date of implementation of operationalization of the ‘Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010’ to 1st March 2011.
At the same time, it is possible to go ahead with the registration of customer preferences. The regulation provides that  the customer preferences would be effective within seven days. The Authority has, therefore, decided to start Customer preference registrations from 10th February 2011, so as to take the process forward.

Do you think NCPR will solve the real issue?

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Airtel Launches Airtel Money, India’s First Mobile Wallet Service [Updated]

Airtel has launched India’s first mobile wallet service by a telecom operator.

Aimed at offering customers with an efficient alternative to cash transactions, airtel money will provide airtel customers across the country with a convenient and secure way of making payments through the ubiquitous mobile platform.

In 2010, bharti airtel was granted the license to use the Semi Closed Wallet by the Reserve Bank of India (read: Airtel Gets RBI’s Nod for Mobile Payment Service [First Step to Mobile Currency]).

Currently available in Gurgaon only, Airtel has already established partnerships with several merchants (including coffee shops, restaurants etc) to accept payments via airtel money – which will gradually be scaled up to over 3,000 merchants across the city. Airtel money will subsequently be launched in Delhi NCR and several other key cities in India.

Where can you use airtel money?

• Load cash: Load cash on your airtel mobile by visiting your nearest airtel retail outlet [Minimum is Rs. 10, Maximum is Rs. 5,000 and monthly limit stands at Rs. 50, 000].
• Pay bills & recharge: You will be able to use this cash in your mobile for making bill payments (electricity, gas, financial services, etc.) and recharge – Limits same as above.
• Shop & make payments: Instead of cash, pay over-the-counter merchants such as your nearest kirana store, chemist, etc using your mobile phone. You can even sit at home and pay for services like booking movie tickets online

Airtel had recently announced a JV with State Bank of India to provide banking and financial services to millions of unbanked Indians using the mobile platform. With this launch of airtel money – airtel now offers a complete suite of financial products on mobile devices for the banked as well as unbanked population of the country.

How To use airtel money

• Register by filling in the application form and submitting KYC documents (2 photocopies of proof-of-identity, 1 copy of proof-of-address and a passport size photograph).
• After the above, your existing airtel SIM will be upgraded to the new 64K airtel SIM with airtel money
• Activate your airtel money account by choosing your MPIN.
• Load cash into your airtel money account by visiting your nearest airtel retailer
• You are now ready to send commands through the airtel money application on your phone and transact anytime, anywhere!

Pricing/Charges

Airtel will charge a month subscription fee of Rs. 5/month and charges Rs. 5/payment.

Essentially, this is not a semi closed wallet service (as allowed by RBI) that enables you to add money, but not withdraw (instead, make payments/buy goods and services).

Question to ponder: Wondering what happens to mChek usage after this? Also, why is Airtel trying to do everything on its own (i.e. be the ngpay + mChek) and not build an ecosystem?

RBI has also approved Mobile Money Services from Nokia | Nokia Launches Mobile Money Service in Chandigarh

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Samurai Incubate Launches 2nd Fund To Invest In 10 New Tech Start-ups

Samurai Incubate, a Tokyo-based seed accelerator aiming to bring up many Japanese tech start-ups, announced today the launch of its second fund which is worth 62 millon yen (=USD755,000).

With its first fund launched in 2009, the firm invested in nine tech start-ups including social translation service Conyac (refer to this Asiajin story), smartphone ad-optimizer Nobot (refer to this), Sassor and Rei Frontier.   (Refer to the Asiajin story via the link in the “See Also” section below for more details about Sassor and Rei Frontier.)

Mr. Kentaro Sakakibara, the firm’s CEO, says, it will complete investment in new ten tech start-ups by this coming March, and some of those will be registered as companies in the US to intend to compete in the international arena from their seed rounds to exits.   He told us that eight of the ten start-ups has not yet been introduced to the public, and they are brand new from the categories of share, cloud, lifelog and social services.

See Also:

• Samurai Incubate Holds Annual 1-Day Camp For Young CEOs

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Founders Drinks v2.0 with SocialGenie

The first Founders Drinks for this year was off to a great start. Over 80 founders turned up for this event and the venue was packed to the brim.

We tried and tested out the new format for Founders Drinks: A 30-min feedback session on a startup idea followed by the networking session. After garnering maximum votes, SocialGenie was selected to present at the event. Specific cliched words were banned during the feedback session such as: Social, Game Mechanics and Pivot.

Event Feedback

The new format had a some takers and some felt it could be done better. So, we want honest and ruthless feedback from you on how we can further improve the format of this event. Do let us know in the comments.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from the event.

We would like to thank Pivotal Labs for sponsoring this edition of Founders Drinks.

Looking forward to meeting you all again for next month’s Founders Drinks.

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