August 27th, 2008
Gauravonomics TV Episode 8: Only If My Nokia E71 Had an App Ecosystem
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Many of you may know that I record and upload my vidcasts exclusively from my Nokia E71 smartphone. I also use my E71 almost exclusively for reading my e-mail and 150 feeds, and accessing the only four social networks I am really active on — YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. If you add to that my compulsive calendering and my total reliance on GPS even to navigate two blocks, you can imagine how big a role my E71 is playing in my life right now. In fact, I would say that the E71 has been my main computer for the last two weeks. For the most part, it has been great and I totally love it.
However, a phone is as good as the app ecosystem around it and there is no app ecosystem around the Nokia E71. It comes with half a dozen pre-installed apps and apart from the mainstream web services like GMail/ GoogleReader/ GoogleMaps/ YouTube/ Yahoo/ Flickr/ Twitter/ Facebook, pretty much nothing else works on it. As much as I love the E71, I can’t see it getting traction against the iPhone unless Nokia gets developers to write apps for it.
Increasingly, that’s true not only for mobile phones, but also for almost all digital product or service offerings. By building an app ecosystem, a company can focus on its core offereing and allow partners to use its API to build layers of functionality on top of it. Facebook, Twitter and iPhone are all great examples of this thinking.
While most companies are beginning to acknowledge the importance of a robust app ecosystem, many have found it difficult to build one. The question, then, is — why are some companies better than others at partnering with developers for building an app ecosystem?
Also See: What can we learn about the iPhone app ecosystem from the Facebook app ecosystem? by Fred Wilson, Facebook’s Booming App Ecosystem by Mark Evans, O’Reilly Radar Report–The Facebook Application Ecosystem: Why Some Thrive–and Most Don’t, The application ecosystem: ten lessons learned by Henry Morris.
I like to think of am mobile market. much the same as computers. app independent hardware. device independent software. the future.
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[…] Gauravonomics TV Episode 8: Only If My Nokia E71 Had an App Ecosystem | Gauravonomics Blog - A nice video from my Indian social media friend Guarav. My take: In addition to an API..Nokia needs to keep in mind that Mac users need a piece of software too! + It's 2008, where do you want to go by releasing a device with a 3MP camera? (especially after you kicked out more powerful N95s..)..E71 It feels like a lousy competition to gain some market shares VS the iPhone. This era is not just about media consumption..is also about media production.. If I have to pay hundreds of euros for a device I'm more tempted to give a chance to Apple and get an iPhone, at least I'll test something new/different. […]
[…] recently posted a fast snippet on what I think about the new Nokia E71 after watching a video created by my digital friend Guarav Mishra from […]
It runs some version of Symbian, yes? S60 3.1 perhaps?
http://www.s60.com/life/application/displayApplications.do?type=&deviceId=3765
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Did you ever find any satisfactory E71 apps for Facebook, Flickr or YouTube? I have been using Twibble on my E71 to access Twitter and I find it to be OK! Would like to know if you found any other worthy apps. I can be reached at BellTinkR at gmail dot com
Thanks -
Tink *~*~*
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