Those following the mobile gaming industry paid notice that the Finnish gaming studio Universomo was shut down (in Finnish) by its owner THQ Wireless, which acquired the Finnish firm back in 2007. Rumors started to spread on Tuesday this week and pretty soon THQ confirmed the liquidation of the studio. This is part of a bigger shift in the game industry.
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The Game Industry In Flux
Suntrica Chargers Now Apple Approved
While much of the attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is on new handsets and software, Suntrica from Finland silently announced that they got their Solar Strap approved by Apple. Their new Solar Strap, which comes now in four nice colours and got even lighter, is working with the iPhone 3G and 3 GS, as well as the iPod Touch, Classic and Nano. This is a great opportunity for all the Apple fans to charge their iPhones and iPods while away from an outlet, be it in the city or hiking.
For those who don’t have an iPhone or iPod but are looking for an environmentally friendly way to load their phones and gadgets, Suntrica still has the normal SolarStrap which is compatible with a range of phones, and also can be loaded up via USB for those rainy days and carried as a backup. Finally, the company is also helping out the people in Haiti, as relief workers are powering their mobile phones with Suntrica chargers – a great sign that they are not only interested in profits, but also in the well being of other people.
Foodie.fm Helps You Grocery Shop Smarter
Foodie.fm is that obvious thing that I always knew I needed but could not think of. There’s about a million different ToDo list apps and cooking apps that help you do partly what Foodie.fm does, but not really.
Foodie.fm enables smart grocery shopping by allowing the user to browse different recipes and then add that meal to their shopping cart. It lets me see different meals and then breaks them down into the needed ingredients in just the right amounts and once I tab ‘Add to cart’ it ads it to my shopping list on my phone. Now, here’s the beauty. Foodie’s back end is connected to all the stores in a given chain (They just announced a partnership with S-Ryhmä in Finland) and the server technology learns from what I like to buy and starts to …wait for it… make recommendations to me when such ingredients or products are on sale in my local store (iPhone lets the service know where I live and recommends me to choose a store as my local shop). You can get the iPhone App here.
Get The ArcticIndex iPhone App Now!
ArcticIndex, our directory for Nordic and Baltic startups, people, startup jobs and events, just got iPhoned. ArcticIndex iPhone app is developed by Arun Prakash Rajendran, a passionate mobile entrepreneur living in Göteborg, Sweden. You can check out the App at Prakash’s app gallery, or get it directly here.
I have used the app for couple of days now and love the ease I can check out the new events listings. Similarly, if you’re looking for a startup to join its a whim to check out the latest jobs at ArcticIndex and see what the company is all about from the Index.
We will introduce more features for ArcticIndex soon, so make sure you have your iPhone App ready when that happens.
Spezify, Doing Well In The Visual Search Boom
ArcticStartup have earlier reported about a promising Nordic visual search engine initiative – the Stockholm based Spezify.com, a visual multimedia search engine founded by Felix af Ekenstam and Per Persson, digital creatives and freelancers. Their concept have a great potential to grab a big piece of this market. Continue reading »
Kuneri Launches Alpha Version Of Mobile Joomla! For Mobilizing Your Website (We Have Invites)
Kuneri has launched a limited Alpha of Mobile Joomla! as a way to easily mobilize websites made with Joomla!, a popular and extremely extensible open source content management system. Joomla! has a huge developer community and maybe some 30 million websites created using it, including quite a few corporate and high traffic sites.
Kuneri Mobile Joomla! allows out-of-the-box mobilization of Joomla! websites within minutes. The admin interface of Mobile Joomla! allows one to determine the mobile site outlook and optimization methods even handset by handset. One can for example have a higher end graphics and layout for iPhone and smartphones, and more basic site for feature phones.
The Apple Tablet …Which Is Made In Sweden. Or Is It Kindle? (Video)
One can’t have missed the buzz (to the extent its ridiculous) of Apple’s rumored tablet that is rumored to be unveiled in San Francisco on Tuesday, January 26.
In addition to the Jesus tablet (yes, that’s what some people call it) there are rumors about a similar-ish device from Microsoft, a color tablet device called Courier and of course HTC is cooking one with Google, maybe. At least that’s the word on the street.
What do you do with the too big iPhone? Just as the vision of the infamous CrunchPad, it would be a great device to browse the web laying on the couch. After all taking a MacBook Pro to bed or browsing it while laying on the couch is not only clunky and difficult, it is also likely to burn you. But there is only so much Internet you can browse while laying on your back or when curled up on a couch. So what would be even better usage for a browser that does not fit in your pocket?
Continue reading »
Predictions For 2010 – What Are You Betting On?
The year has just turned to 2010 and it’s time to do some predicting into the future on the most likely trends this year. While they may not be accurate nor hold true in the end, it’s nice to get a feel for what people are predicting. I’ve got 6 predictions, some not so spectacular, others slightly more outside the possible reach.
The first one is a pretty obvious one based on the recent developments in the media world as well as the startups involved in this industry as well: online video will become a mainstream alternative for advertisers. This does not mean that online video itself will be watched in equally large amounts to regular television, but it will become an alternative and a possibility for advertisers. This essentially means that the industry itself will grow as a business and become an attractive platform for doing business.
Continue reading »
GetJar Says Mobile Apps Market Becomes Bigger Than The Internet. We Don’t Think So
In an interview with Econsultancy, GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs talked about his vision for apps and how they will take over the internet. We disagree.
GetJar is the world’s second largest mobile app store founded in Lithuania offering over 57,000 apps for all mobile devices and serving over 55m downloads per month. To date they have achieved over 750m downloads and attracted 300,000 registered developers and 50,000 registered beta testers.
In the interview Laurs’ says that the battle of the app stores will culminate in a dramatic change to the market over the next 12-18 months, and at least 90% of app stores will fail. Further, the importance of global mobile billing will become critical: Several $10M-a-year mobile app businesses will appear in 2010 as the apps market gathers momentum. The billing processes and agreements will improve in 2011 and 2012, stimulating the app economy and the rise of the $100m app businesses.
Mobile Nordic Is Now Numo Solutions, Accelerates Internationalization
Norwegian mobile caller ID search startup Mobile Nordic has changed its name to Numo Solutions. Accordingly, the firm’s mobile phone number and SMS search products, previously with country-specific localized names, will be branded as Numo Finder and Numo SMS Preview, respectively. The changes preempt new operator deals and handset manufacturer deals in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, said to be announced within a few months. The firm will also open new offices and affiliates in Beijing, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, and Taipei.
MySQL Founders Invest In Cross-Platform Tech Provider Mobile Sorcery
A Swedish mobile technology startup Mobile Sorcery has gotten a Series A investment of undisclosed sum a second round seed investment of 1.5 million Swedish Kronor (around 145.000 EUR or 206.000 USD)(Correction: the actual investment was a lot bigger, “a proper A round”, yet the exact sum is undisclosed) from MySQL founders David Axmark and Michael Widenius, and STING (Stockholm Innovation and Growth) Capital private equity fund. Majority of this round’s investment came Axmark and Widenius, while for STING this was the second investment in Mobile Sorcery.
Dopplr Launches iPhone App, Sees Recession Easing In 2010
On Thursday, Dopplr launched a very cool iPhone app that puts the social atlas into full use. In essence, it’s a mobile travel guide getting its details from Dopplr. It’s even better when you have an account with Dopplr, you can do the usual stuff of seeing where your friends are and best of all, contact them if you don’t happen to remember their contact details at that moment (or don’t have them on you).
Continue reading »
Marketing 101 For iPhone Apps
Yesterday I wrote (or ranted) about the need to also market your iPhone apps instead of just throwing them into App Store and complaining people do not find them. This time I will elaborate more on the marketing tools. There is a multitude of ways you can market your app and one could write a book on that, so let’s just cover the basics here (which should not be much news if you have thought about things at all).
Dumping An App To iPhone App Store Is Not Marketing
The iPhone craze is hot as ever, with over 50,000 developers reportedly registered, 800 million apps downloaded, and VC investments being made to pure-play iPhone firms. Some have commented that cream really rises to the top from the hundreds of new apps daily published in the App Store, but there have been even bigger amount of complaints that lots of great apps or games go unnoticed. A big fuss has also been the pricing competition, reducing prices to 0,99 or even below in order get visibility on the Top lists and drive downloads that way. In my opinion, lots of the aspiring developers should look in the mirror rather than criticize Apple or others for their poor performance.
As sexy a business as iPhone and for example games is, it does not mean that normal business rules would not apply — you cannot just build a product, make it available to the world and expect a huge success. iPhone has been great in that it gives the developers direct access to consumers world-wide. But along with the access comes also a big bunch of responsibilities and headaches. You need to do marketing as well just as in any other business. And that is what most small developers are poor at.
Create and Share Walking Tours on BlueWalks
BlueWalks is a Swedish startup online service for travelers who enjoy walking and sightseeing. In essence it is a Google Maps mashup, allowing users to browse, create, and share walking tours.
The founders state they want to give travelers a chance to plan their trips easier and faster. In the future, the BlueWalks team also wants to eliminate the need to carry along travel books and other material. The value proposition is users can create and browse unlimited amount of different routes around various points of interest, compared just a few routes typically listed in printed travel guides.
BlueWalks has been founded by an international team of students from the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship (SSES). The team members have roots in Sweden, Spain, Singapore, and China, providing a global view into developing the service. BlueWalks just took part in the international business plan competition Venture Challenge in San Diego, sent as a delegate of SSES. (Well, international in this case seems to mean that out of 25 teams 1 was from Canada, BlueWalks from Sweden, and the other 23 teams from the U.S.) BlueWalks did not get to the final, though.
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