We are pleased to announce that our first release version of zintin has been accepted onto the iPhone App Store! We just received Apple’s stamp of approval for our app, so we will be live as soon as the App Store comes online in a few days time.
We’ve all been coding hard for the last few days and nights (sleep, what’s that?), so we are proud to have met this key deadline. Now we can’t wait for users to get their hands on zintin!
Now that the details of the new iPhone are out, the next pieces of news around the iPhone will be regarding the App Store. Several companies have apps confirmed to be coming out, and Zintin will be one of the applications on the iPhone’s App Store this summer but there are as many as hundreds of thousands of people building apps right now. What can we expect in the future, and what is going to be big?
In the last post we mentioned that we spoke with a partner managing the iFund at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB). They believe that iPhone apps will be huge, in fact, the opportunity is “on par with or greater than the PC internet.” Chi-Hua Chien, the KPCB partner we spoke with, also said that the number of applications that iFund has received from companies is in the thousands. We would like to share a bit about his thoughts on what apps will be popular.
We were also fortunate enough to see Mike Mace of Mobile Opportunity discuss his recent iPhone user survey. His experience working for Palm and Apple for many years was a great help in digesting the data, and he made some interesting points about iPhone apps.
The iPhone user survey indicates, as expected, that people with iPhones are early adopters, they own a lot of technology products, and they are young. It looks like a majority of iPhone users will be looking to install apps on their iPhones.
Mike Mace and Kleiner’s Chi-Hua Chien agree that good iPhone applications will take advantage of the fact that the phone is very personal, and it is always with you. A while back KPCB put some money in mobile software that uses a user’s location to provide information about nearby restaurants and such. Many companies will be trying to leverage location data to provide personalized services like this. The question is, how much do apps need to build on top of that basic location data. When we spoke with Chi-Hua, he said that a good app must at least have a sense of their environment, but that isn’t enough. He seemed to indicate, and we agree, that the obvious apps are not great ways to build companies (e.g. there will be hordes of products competing to show users nearby restaurants, and that is not a full-featured app).
One of Mike Mace’s points about big applications was something like “the killer app is diversity” meaning that few apps will be both customized enough to be interesting and still useful to everyone. Several examples of customized apps he mentioned were specific to a certain profession (e.g. an app which helps a health professional calculate a person’s vital stats in the back of an ambulance). We think a better manifestation of a customized app would be one that lets the user do the customizing, such that the app works differently for different people.
The zintin iPhone app fits the bill on both counts. Zintin leverages proximity to other users as opposed to location, but goes further to let you interact with these people. Users can broadcast media (i.e. picture) profiles to the people around them, as well as view and add to other people’s profiles. Because the content is user generated, the app will be different things to different people. For example, we have discussed helping bands promote themselves through broadcasting media. When the beta launches (sign-up here) the app will focus on media sharing, but as we get more feedback from our users, and continue to finish current projects, we hope to make new types of interactions available, so be ready to update zintin to get new features.
We are excited to see what other developers have been cooking up, and we are very excited to share what we have been working on. If you have an iPhone, make sure you sign up for the beta of our iPhone app.
We recently did an interview with Steve O’Hear from last100.com. Steve is based in the UK, but has an interest in Silicon Valley. His interview with us is now up, so go check it out.
The iPhone has defied the common power structure that puts carriers on top, brought in $2 billion in extra cash for ATT, offered the first real web experience on a phone, and finally showed us all what a phone can do. Despite all this, it is not at the top of the list for smartphone sales, and there are signs that it has had little success outside of traditional early adopters and mac fans (more about this in an upcoming post).
We recently spoke with Chi-Hua Chien, a partner at KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers), managing the iFund (a $100 million venture fund for businesses making iPhone apps) and we would like to share his thoughts, and ours, about the future of the iPhone.
First, some numbers. In 2007, Apple sold 4 million iPhones and aims to sell 10 million in 2008. Apple is projecting it will sell 45 million iPhones in 2009. I’ll repeat that for impact: Apple plans to have about 60 million iPhones out in less than two years. KPCB said at an iPhone Developers meetup that by adding the iPod touch to those numbers, they expect 100 million devices by the end of 2009. This sounds ambitious, but KPCB is confident.
We agree that the iPhone has sold well (zintin will be out on the iPhone this summer and it will be a couple of months at least before we appear on other phones). But we think that what is really unique right now is the set of market conditions that created the iPhone. Technology has been advancing at a steady pace, but in the US, most major wireless carriers have stifled innovation through closed business practices. After so many years, we have reached a tipping point; users want cool and useful phones like the iPhone so badly that the carriers stand to make more money by finally giving users what they want than by keeping users locked in to contracts with cheap phones. These market conditions don’t only affect Apple products of course; they have inspired Google to work on an open source mobile OS (Android), and inspired Microsoft and RIM to produce real web browsers for their phones. Many other companies are or will be following suit.
So while the iPhone is certainly the start of an avalanche, its not clear yet that the competition will let it run away with the market. Apple may sell 100 million units (if you include the iPod Touch), but what will be more interesting is how much they sell compared to everyone else (Android phones, Windows mobile phones, Blackberry, etc.)
Google just showed a brief demo (good stuff at engadget, techCrunch and androidcommunity) of a prototype phone called the HTC Dream. While the demo is just plain cool, we (zintin) think it also sheds new light on the future of the mobile software space, and the upcoming competition between iPhone, Android and established players.
As far as we can tell, the first phones running Android will be targeted towards people looking for a phone/entertainment device hybrid, and thus the phones will compete most directly with the iPhone. A few days ago at the last Silicon Valley iPhone developers meetup Mike Mace (of MobileOpportunity) shared some insight into the mobile market segmentation with us. One of the points he made clear was that there is a large divide between people who want entertainment from their phones and people who want business features. This seems to be a somewhat common perception among people watching the space. However, we think that the street view demo shown today on Android says something else.
The Google street view app is beautifully integrated with unique characteristics of the mobile device, (eg the compass). This is a great example of the kind of new software that people have been waiting to see on phones. However, its not an entertainment app. And its not a business app either. In fact, its just a plain useful app.
What does this mean then? It means that the market segmentation of mobile devices is changing. No longer will there be a strict divide between business and entertainment devices. New phones that have great new features which are useful to everyone have a chance to make inroads in all segments.
Zintin will be out on the iPhone first, but we are very excited about what we have already been able to do on Android. Both platforms are already breeding grounds for innovation, and when new apps start to hit the market, expect to see some big changes in the mobile market.
Visit zintin.com to sign up for the beta announcement.
zintin.com has just been updated! Our placeholder site is gone, and we are now allowing everyone to sign up to be notified when our beta mobile social media product is out. (We won’t give your email address to anyone, and we won’t send you anything else.)
We have been working hard on zintin on the iPhone for a while now, and while the product has been moving along, our website and blog were not. Our blog should be a little more active starting now. We still won’t be releasing product details for a couple of weeks or so, but want to share our view of the mobile space from the inside so keep an eye out for upcoming blog posts. If you haven’t already, you may want to sign up for our blog RSS feed.
When building a new product a company needs to be careful to position the product correctly. A common concern is whether the product can stand up on its own, or whether it is only valuable enough to be a feature of something larger. As we continue to define what zintin is, we want to take this concern seriously. I decided a good way to start is by looking back at past examples. When I thought of previous new and unexpected networking technologies I thought immediately of the web (sorry to be cliche). The web lets people share documents between computers, and in it’s first incarnation, not much else. Well guess what, there were already word processors that let you generate such documents, the web must have sounded like a great feature for word processors.
What is missed by this simple view is that sharing is actually much more valuable than document generation. Document sharing on the web is not a feature of some larger product like MS Office, it is a first class product, one that has reshaped the world. At zintin, we are aiming at taking sharing to the next level. We want to connect our users to the people around them so they can share things with anyone they interact with. Of course this sounds like a great feature for lots of products, but we strongly believe that this kind of sharing is going to be valuable. We know we aren’t going to be as big as the web, but we are confident that zintin will be a first class product.
There is a lot going on in the mobile space right now. Android and the iPhone have started something, a market wave, which a lot of companies plan on riding to the top. Many have recognized that one of the first big mobile apps will be presence awareness, and as a result, there are a number of startups diving into that space.
What is presence awareness? The idea is that when you walk into a room, your phone will know who is around you. Several companies are excited by the idea of browsing the profiles of other users near you. This provides a new way to meet people and break the ice, there is also a way to apply the platform to dating. Almost every mobile presence company we have seen so far is taking this basic idea in a different direction. Of course, our application is also unique, and for various reasons we think our approach is the best. Stay tuned for the specifics.
We walked into a room with a giant orange Y on the wall. With nice chill music playing in the background we were greeted by a robot that shook our hands. Within a few minutes, all three of us were in conversations with some amazing people with great new ideas for making people’s lives easier. It was mind blowing.
Tonight was the reception dinner for the people attending Y-Combinator’s “Startup School”. Without going into detail, Y-Combinator is a company that starts startups. They accept a few companies each year for an incubator style program. Startup School is an event on Stanford campus tomorrow, which will be a whirlwind tour of the challenges involved in starting a company.
We had a great time at the dinner tonight and are really pleased with the reaction we got to our idea from everyone we met. It was really rewarding to hear people eager to try out all of the things we are doing with mobile phones. There are a couple of interesting companies that we could possibly partner with and we are looking forward to meeting them and everyone else tomorrow morning at the Startup School.
On finishing note we’d like to say hi to all of the new friends we made tonight. See you guys tomorrow!
We are proud to announce the birth of the beautiful new (and imaginatively named) zintin blog! Our website and blog are a little bare right now, but we will be filling them out in the coming weeks and months.
We are currently developing our application for Android, which is an exciting new platform for mobile phones. We are having a great time building it, and can’t wait to get it into users’ hands!
For now we have just entered a prototype for our app into the Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge, which is meant to promote the development of “original […], appealing and indispenable” mobile apps. Zintin fits the bill on all counts.
We look forward to telling you more about the details of our app and our vision, so watch this space!