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.
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Guest post by Daiva Naravaite, co-founder of AlpinaSearch. AlpinaSearch is a provider of global Search, Selection & On-boarding services for innovative start-ups and their investors.
Who would have believed that the country with the highest mobile subscription rate worldwide (138% as per World Economic Forum’s World Competitiveness report), the broadest high-speed mobile broadband coverage and the densest network of public internet access points in Europe is the small nation of Lithuania, sandwiched between Latvia, Belarus, Poland, Kaliningrad and the Baltic sea?
Prompted by comments I heard on numerous occasions (including geeky ArcticStartup and TechCrunch events), and equally inspired by the enthusiastic entrepreneurial community in Lithuania, I thought I’ll share a few facts.
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Four Nordic and Baltic Startups were selected to Mobile Peer Awards 2009 Finals in Barcelona by the international virtual Jury from the 42 semi-finalists.
- Fortumo – MobileMonday Estonia
- Portal for setting up free and extremely fast web-based mobile services and monetizing them, offering billing in 11 countries and expanding.
- Getjar Networks – MobileMonday Lithuania
- One of the world’s most popular mobile application distribution and developer communities with over 14 million downloads per month.
- Mobintech – MobileMonday Copenhagen
- Offers small digital display glasses, through which the small screen of mobile phones will be transformed into an experience similar to viewing a 30” flat screen TV.
- PopCatcher – MobileMonday Sweden
- Provides technology and products for stripping out talk and commercials from recorded radio music into plain music MP3’s.
The firms will be presenting their final pitch in Barcelona on February 16th.
(See the full list of the 20 selected companies on Mobile Peer Awards web page.)
Congrats all four!
MobileMonday 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?
Last Friday, Microsoft launched a new program called Bizspark that offers startups of different ages and stages tools to take care of their software and hosting requirements. Technopolis Ventures, Veraventure, The Finnish Software Entrepeneurs Association and Venture Cup has partnered with Microsoft in Finland to accept participants into the program.
Startups must meet the following requirements to be accepted into the program:
- Be actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core of its current or intended business
- Be privately held
- Be in business for less than 3 years and
- Have less than 1 million USD annual turnover.
Despite being a Mac fanatic, I have to give it to Microsoft for pulling this off. They are sponsoring a wide range of products that suit many companies working in the internet space especially. Also, the packages being offered are tailored for companies in different stages of their growth and thus are also bundled together with their capability to pay for the software.
For more information, visit Microsoft Bizspark. You can also find your partners in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Baltics through this link.
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