If you are looking to buy digital content and goods using your mobile phone, then you should check out Bango. Bango works with credit cards and PayPal internationally and works across all kinds of mobile devices. Bango is a web-based mobile payment provider.
Send, receive and pay money using your cell phone with Luup. Partnering with banks around the globe, Luup is building an international mobile transaction network that specializes in the hosting of stored value account for financial institutions.
Don’t have access to credit cards or a bank account? Not to worry. Mopay offers a quick and simple billing solution for small online purchases (mainly virtual goods) through mobile operator accounts.
Now you can send money via text messages. With Xipwire, you can fund your account with money from a debit card, bank account, or credit card and with just a couple of steps, you can send and receive money using a simple text message.
If you are into social networking and online gaming and don’t have a bank account, Zong allows you to make small purchases with your mobile phone. The charge is directed to the mobile operator and then charged on your cell phone bill.
See a list of 3rd party in-app billing solutions for developers, link here.
So you thought of a great iPhone or Android app, but you are not a mobile app developer. Who do you need to hire for your mobile app team? Or rather, what are the key ingredientsrequired for building a mobile app?
To actually create the mobile application, you need a Mobile Application Engineer (or Developer). This person will be familiar with C++, Objective C, GUI, WebKit, and webOS. Since creating mobile applications is fairly new, most web developers/programmers can merge whatever they are doing on a PC onto mobile. Or at least the real talented ones. You can find Mobile Applications Developer for hire at FoneGigs.
The second ingredient for creating your mobile app team is a good UI Designer. The UI Designer is responsible for helping define the look-and-feel for the interactive application. Their key job is to ensure that when operating the application, it is a positive user experience. If you can find a mobile engineer (back-end developer) who has UI experience (front-end developer), you are in luck!
Finally, you may need a good graphic artist. If you really want to make the characters and application look cool (especially if it is a game), then you should invest in a designer. Find mobile art designers for hire at FoneGigs.
Now these are the three essential ingredients that make up a good mobile app team. But wait! What about the Marketing person, the guy or gal who is going to market your mobile application and create lots of buzz? Afterall, you don’t really plan on hiring a creative or media agency to advertise your app.
The best article I have read on how to market a mobile application is written by Michael Flarup Check out his article on Smashing here. Michael provides tons of useful tips on how to market an application without spending a fortune and you will need to hold on to every dollar since apps will cost you anywhere from $20k to $200k to develop. Don’t forget, you have to have the mobile app modified every time a new mobile handset comes out. So it is basically an ongoing investment just to make sure your application runs on every handset and every operating system.
Share your Experience and Help Others!
Feel free to post a comment. If you’re just looking to meet others in the same industry, share photos or talk about cool applications that make your life easier, then connect with us on Facebook. If you’d like to just learn about new mobile app developer jobs or mobile marketing opportunities, then follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or subscribe to our job feed. You can also download free mobile directories (Mobile Ad Networks, Mobile Analytics Companies, Mobile Search Engines, In-Game Ad Networks) here.
Thanks!
Eric Melchor, Founder – FoneGigs – The FIRST job board dedicated to Mobile Marketing and Mobile Application Developer Jobs.
Driven primarily by consumer smartphone adoption, the latest wave in mobile communication is of the silent kind. A study released today by research firm BIA/Kelsey and ConSat reports that among mobile consumers surveyed in October, 18.5 percent searched the Internet for products or services in their local area, up from 15.6 percent in 2008.
“This third wave of our Mobile Market View study confirms several key trends taking shape in the rapidly evolving mobile advertising space,” said Steve Marshall, director of research and consulting, BIA/Kelsey, in a statement. “Not the least among these trends is that mobile is quickly developing into a viable platform for local commercial activity.”
The Mobile Market View study, which is conducted annually in October, surveys 504 U.S. mobile phone users aged 18 and older via an online 40-question survey. The study measures a wide range of mobile phone activities, with the objectives of gauging overall trends in usage.
Highlights from the study:
The percentage of users making more than 10 mobile Internet accesses per week continues to increase significantly, now representing over one-fifth of all mobile users.
48.2 percent sent or received more than 10 text (SMS) messages per week
21 percent had more than 10 Internet accesses per week
20 percent sent or received more than 10 e-mails per week
18.5 percent searched the Internet for local products or services
15.9 percent obtained information about movies or other entertainment
13.3 percent obtained information about restaurants or bars
11.1 percent searched the Internet for products or services outside their local area
4 percent purchased a physical item that needed to be shipped (e.g., a book)
If anyone is interested in designing or developing WAP sites for mobile phones, I have found some very useful information and put together this list of 11 essential tools for mobile Web development. You can also learn more about Punchkick Interactive’s mobile WAP and Web Site development capabilities.
Mobi Ready score
Get your free page analysis and Mobi Ready score. This report tests the mobile-readiness of your site using industry best practices & standards
XHTML mobile phone emulator
Type in your .com / .net / .org / .biz, etc. site address and you can check how your site looks to a typical mobile phone user. Available handsets are the Nokia n70 and a Sony K750.
Media buyers with a large footprint in digital advertising now have a new, easy way to get into the mobile space, thanks to Mobclix. The industry’s largest targed mobile ad exchange announced yesterday that it is partnering with Advertising.com and Traffic Marketplace, making it possible for these online advertising networks to provide direct access to mobile audiences.
“For the first time, online ad networks have instant access to mobile inventory and can provide a one-stop shop for digital media buys,” said Krishna Subramanian, Mobclix co-founder, in a statement.
Advertisers benefit from the partnership due to an easy, streamlined buying process for both online and mobile ads. Reporting in one place for an entire digital campaign will also help advertisers monitor their campaign’s spend and success.
“By teaming up with Mobclix to offer this inventory to our clients, we’re removing the added barrier that has been a deterrent to the growth of mobile advertising until now,” said Jim Waltz, President, Traffic Marketplace.
To download the free complete directory of Mobile Ad Networks, click here.
ComScore has just announced (Oct-2009) they are releasing Plan Metrix Mobile, which combines reported mobile behavior measurement and key mobile device ownership characteristics with attitudinal, lifestyle and product usage information.
This Mobile Media Planning tool will allow mobile marketers to identify a set of mobile web properties that meet target demographic and psychographic requirements across more than 5,000 variables, including purchasing habits and media consumption.
Additional product highlights include:
Access to audience attributes across 18 different consumer profile segments including demographics, traditional media consumption, usage of telecommunications, electronics/computers, and /apparel and other behavioral segments.
Access to mobile device ownership characteristics in nine key categories including cell phone brand, operator, price of handset, length of current subscription, mobile phone use, ownership of current handset, monthly payment tier, payment option and type of additional plan.
Access to mobile content consumption with reporting at the category, sub-category and individual brand levels.
Other Mobile Media Planning Tools?
In 2008, Millennial Media released a mobile audience-building tool. The Web-based solution combines multiple data sources to provide an actionable, targetable media plan based on audience composition, composition index, available impressions, and potential reach by site, device and carrier for any defined target audience.
Also in 2008, Nielsen Media Research introduced a platform that media planners can use to mine audience research data. Clear Decisions, which took two years and $3.5 million to develop, was in some ways conceived from the inadequacies of Nielsen’s Interactive Market Systems (IMS). Nielsen analyzed the behavior of 85 percent of its customer base to determine how they used IMS, ultimately developing Clear Decisions out of those findings.
Clear Decisions enables users to locate, compile and analyze data across media more efficiently. It is also mobile-accessible. Nielsen clients may access it at no charge.
