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Event Report: Mobile Monday

by Nick Mueller, January 13, 2010 — 1 Comment

On Monday night Squace hosted the first of a new generation of Mobile Monday events in Stockholm. The evening featured pitches by 6 young companies in the mobile space, followed by commentary from an expert panel of tech. journalists, investors, and senior members of the tech. community. After the presentation, attendees were asked to vote on the most interesting company, with the winner getting a nomination for the Mobile Peer Award at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This nomination carries some weight, since last years nomination, PopCatcher, went on to win the special jury award.

The following is a quick rundown of the companies that presented last night, and who will be representing Stockholm in Barcelona next month. Continue reading »

bluewalks Wins SeedRocket, Gets Seed Investment

by Miikka Kukkosuo, August 5, 2009 — 1 Comment
bluewalks, a Stockholm based web startup (our previous coverage), won the SeedRocket Camp startup competition in July in Barcelona, earning them a seed investment of EUR 20,000 and a 6-month stay in Barcelona Activa Incubator with further mentoring. The service of bluewalks allows creating and sharing of walking tours.
SeedRocket is a Spanish startup event/competition, somewhat similar to more widely know Seedcamp http://www.seedcamp.com/
SeedRocket consists of training workshops and discussions lead by successful Spanish web entrepreneurs, and participants also get mentor comments on their business plan. In the end, the teams will make a pitch to mentors, investors, and the SeedRocket team. bluewalks was one of the 12 teams selected from over 100 international applications.
CEO Cristobal Viedma said
bluewalks has currently 30% the traffic coming from Asia, and over 700 walking tours created all around the globe.
bluewalks is currently working on an iPhone app coming up, launching free beta at the end of the summer and premium version planned to launch by December. The app should allow downloading content directly into the phone before the trip or for example at hotel using wifi prior to heading for a walking tour.
The company has released also an API that 2 startups are using already according to Cristobal.
http://blog.bluewalks.com/?p=393
The company plans to monetize by licensing their technology to local tourism boards and others wanting to offer the service for free to all the travelers in the location.
bluewalks is also trying to create a brand among travelers by advertising and giving away merchandising in different hostels and events, while also having an on-line store (store.bluewalks.com) for purchases.

BlueWalks beta logobluewalks, a Stockholm based web startup, won the SeedRocket startup competition in July in Barcelona, earning them a seed investment of EUR 20,000 and a 6-month stay in Barcelona Activa Incubator with further mentoring. The service of bluewalks allows creating and sharing of walking tours.

SeedRocket is a Spanish startup event/competition, somewhat similar to more widely known Seedcamp. bluewalks was one of the 12 teams selected to the event from over 100 international applications. SeedRocket consists of training workshops and discussions lead by successful Spanish web entrepreneurs, and participants also get mentors’ comments on their business plan. In the end, the teams deliver a pitch to mentors, investors, and the SeedRocket team.

bluewalk’s CEO Cristobal Viedma commented the company currently has around 30% of their traffic coming from Asia, and over 700 walking tours created to date. bluewalks is currently working on an iPhone app, launching free beta at the end of the summer, and premium version planned to launch by December. The app should allow downloading maps and tours directly into the phone before the trip or for example at hotel using wifi prior to heading for a walking tour, but also providing online location-based information when wanted. bluewalks has also released an API that according to Cristobal 2 other startups are using already.

bluewalks plans to monetize their service by licensing their technology to local tourism boards, and others wanting to offer the service for free to all the travelers in the location. The company is also trying to create a brand among travelers by advertising and giving away merchandising in different hostels and events, while also having an online store for purchases.

Nokia Launches Ovi (App) Store

by Miikka Kukkosuo, February 16, 2009 — Leave a Comment

Nokia Ovi logo

Nokia has just announced at Mobile World Congress that the company will launch its own app store called Ovi Store, as was rumored. It was expected that Nokia places this service under its global Internet services brand Ovi.

But it will not  be just an “app” store – Ovi Store will serve ringtones, wallpapers, videos, podcasts, applications and games in various languages like Java, Flash lite, widgets. The Ovi Store will thus replace Nokia’s previous services like Download!, Mosh, and Nokia Software Market, thus greatly unifying and simplifying the consumer content offering of Nokia. Interestingly, Ovi Store features social discovery, meaning that users will be recommended and promoted content which is used by their social network. Also location aware featuring will be supported by Nokia. The social features will be supported apparently by at least Facebook and MySpace, who both give a statement in Nokia’s press release.

Nokia Ovi Consumer main imageDevelopers are offered 70 % of the revenue share, similarly Apple App Store. However, the net revenue will hugely depend whether the consumers use credit card or operator billing – they will have the option to choose the method. According to Nokia’s experience on N-Gage billing, vast majority of the consumers select operator billing when given the choice. It is unsure whether it would be possible to offer slightly lower price for credit card purchases to encourage this option – it is unlikely, though, given Nokia needs the approval the operators to include the store in the operator phone variants.

I have not been able to try out the actual user experience yet, but if Nokia has taken note from their cumulated learnings with previous services and Apple, this could be a major boost to the company’s content business and the S40 and S60 software ecosystem. After all, S60 has been, and still is, the platform of choice for many application developers due to the sheer handset volumes in the market. In the gaming market Nokia has a tough task in competing with iPhone, though.

In the beginning, only selected content providers and publishers are allowed to publish in the store, but Nokia will gradually open up the support to all developers. Developers can register for the Ovi Store at publish.ovi.com.

MobileMonday Peer Awards Semifinalists Chosen

by Miikka Kukkosuo, January 20, 2009 — 1 Comment

Mobilemonday Peer Awards 2009 logoMobileMonday Peer Awards 2009 mobile innovation contest semifinalists have been chosen.  From the Nordic and Baltic area, the following firms were selected by their MoMo chapters.

One might ask, however, where are the Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian participants?! There were some interesting startups applying in of those chapters as well, but none are on the semifinalist list (at least on Monday evening) – the chapters didn’t select anyone? Either way, it is good to see the newly-launched Estonian MoMo chapter sent their nominee this year (last year the Helsinki chapter chose Estonian Fromdistance).

Nevertheless, as explained before, there will next be a further selection round by an international virtual jury to select the 20 finalists to the February 16th Barcelona MobileMonday event. Anybody from our readers in the jury?

Nokia’s Change Of Heart

by Ville Vesterinen, October 22, 2008 — 5 Comments

Just recently Nokia, the Finnish born mobile phone manufacturer, put up a competition to find the most innovative mobile apps. We believe this might be part of a bigger initiative to reach out to startups in the wake of what App Store has done for Apple.

The word on the street is that Nokia is really(!) trying to reinvent themselves. This does not only mean shifting the focus partly from hardware to software such as Ovi service which just launched recently, but also possibly finding new partners in the platform area in order to create an ecosystem similar to what Apple is doing with App Store.

Not only has Nokia been sniffing around in Android developer conferences, but when I recently spoke to a Nokia employee working high up in the organization he was carefully asking around how a platform change away from Symbian would affect the startup scene over here in Finland. This might just be speculation or part of a careful scenario planning exercise from Nokia’s part, but then again it might be much more that.

Now, Nokia has put up a mobile app competition (here) which is clearly part of their answer to Apple’s App Store. The contest is open for everyone: independent developers, startups, and so on. There are three different categories for submission:

  1. Eco challenge (looking for apps that help make sustainable choices)
  2. Emerging market challenge (apps to empower people in developing countries)
  3. Technology showcase challenge (looking for killer apps which feature cutting edge mobile technologies)

Winners of each contest will receive $25K cash prize, will be able to distribute their apps through Nokia channels, with possibility to meet VCs, showcase their apps in Mobile World Congress 09 in Barcelona.

The big question is that do these pieces add up to something much more than what we’re currently seeing. Will Nokia take up Android to challenge Apple’s App Store? What do you think?