This week has been pretty mind-blowing to be honest. Two pretty major announcements made from two behemoths in the industry. First out was Vodafone “outing” itself as a smart pipe nothing more and nothing less. Let’s hope the walk matches the talk. Your humble blogger has been a proponent of this for a long time as you know. More about it here and here. 

Then we had Nokia announcing that they would halt development of Ovi Share, align their efforts to work more in sync with third parties like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. Good thinking and way to go to leverage the position as the leading mobiel phone company.

I think we have just witnessed some very positive things the whole economic crisis has brought. This will help growth in the mobile apps/content business. Hopefully this will trigger more outings and realignments for the better.

What is the next move by the big players that would have the biggest positive impact on our industry?

I have written about this before, but I must say that Helen’s post and the video from her presentation is a must read. Again, since I am so passionate about the responsibility we have among us in the industry to create and offer the wow! experiences for the users. We have to close the gap and stop dragging the users screaming and shouting in the door, but create a real and exciting demand for mobile services, like Helen says. Are you still reading my post? I thought you were already at Helen’s blog reading away.

Fragmentation is a major hurdle in this case. Young small (and often quite weak financially) developers try to conquer a world that is dysfunctional. The paradox is quite simple: On one hand you can create a much nicer end-user experience with an application. But on the other hand the distribution of the same application is close to impossible in many cases.

In the case of java applications you need to port to all sorts of devices and all the handset specific quirks. Already there even a tough use of the 80/20 rule can cost you more than the application will ever make. Then you need to get placement on handsets and portals for your app. That will cost you even more.

The harsh sounding conclusion made by Mr. Mace and his fellows is that you have to go with the solution that has the best working distribution and business model. Not the best product/offer to the end user. It is a fairly sad fact, but a reality if you have the notion of living off your hard development work.

This is a rule I have lived by for quite some years with the odd exception. The main thing is that it works most times. In my recent venture, Acemob, we have been cash flow positive from day one in our 1 year long life.

There are niches where you will have enough buyers or motivation from other parties to make a java application work. We see this in the gaming segment, even though many companies in that segment struggle as well.

Well, to finish off on the bright side (it is the end of the week after all and I would hate to ruin your weekend) – WAP/xhtml works these days! The mobile internet experience is not bad at all and flat rates are being offered by most mobile operators. So with the mind sharpened by the restrictions inherent in developing browsing services for mobile phones, there are plenty of opportunities out there. Go get them!