Just amazing example of cargo-cult phenomenon! The idea that using a particular technology (here J2ME) would allow one to get a $16B exit. Hilarious!
Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
111–120 of 239 posts
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#112The key take away from this article is not to build your app in J2ME but to recognize how big the world is outside of America. American focused startups face lots of competition in a relatively small market.
The US is a pretty big market. 320,000,000 people, most with at least some disposable income. There are also plenty of advertisers that want to market their products to Americans, which means you can choose between ad-sponsored or for-pay business models.
This is also why Brazil is heating up so much in terms of start-up interest. It has a large population speaking the same language with significant income and a single government. And its government tends to be somewhat less nervous making (at least in some regards) than China's.
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is a pretty big market. 320,000,000 people, most with at least some disposable income. There are also plenty of advertisers that want to market their products to Americans, which means you can choose between ad-sponsored or for-pay business models.
This. India is a billion people and maybe 10-20% have internet access. Of those 10-20%, the vast majority do NOT have $20k to spend ($20k is the average consumption level of the poorest Americans). China and the Philippines are certainly richer, but not drastically so. Rough numbers: USA is a $16T economy, most of which is on the internet. China is an $8T economy, most of which is not. India is $1.8T. There is certai…
The EU is a $16.5T economy, most of it on the internet, vastly underserved by internet companies compared to the U.S. Even Facebook was English only until 2008. Big business opportunities are being missed there.
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya.. that is definitely the takeaway. If you address all platforms, your market is suddenly both under served and absolutely huge.
One such "platform" is made up of the 80% of android phones that are cheap and basic with small data plans and limited access to slow wifi. The anecdotes from the 80s & 90s when annual PC sales for any given year were a substantial portion of the overall PCs in use at the time are interesting. The realization that software could be written for the newest machine and it would run everywhere soon enough is not directly…
i m using lenovo a 269i android 2.3.6 .it does do lot of thing for 50 phone.i no need high end graphic card.it just a phone which i can call. whatsapp and gps.enough for me.
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#115The key take away from this article is not to build your app in J2ME but to recognize how big the world is outside of America. American focused startups face lots of competition in a relatively small market.
The US is a pretty big market. 320,000,000 people, most with at least some disposable income. There are also plenty of advertisers that want to market their products to Americans, which means you can choose between ad-sponsored or for-pay business models.
But a very brand saturated market with cost of distribution/marketing considerably more expensive than RoW
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#116Your path to happiness? Don't be so obsessed with money. Build something that's fun, and meaningful, that makes you, and others happy.
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#117This. This is the answer I have always looked for. > "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?" I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno, everyone uses it and told me to get it." I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible (just G…
In Holland, WhatsApp dominates, and it's not a $10/day country. It dominates because SMS rates were too expensive here. Even when Mom & Dad would buy you an iPhone, kids were choosing Blackberries (!) as their primary phone because of internet messaging. WhatsApp was seen as something worked with non BB devices (iPhones, Androids). It pretty much murdered the cell phone providers who were giving away cheap data rates…
Yes and I would also add that using the phone number / imei as account identifier helped them a lot to convince everybody and their mother to use the service. Personally I'm not a friend of WhatsApp, but the reason even older, far from tech-savvy people are using it is the ease of access - you don't need anyones username or email - just install the app and your existing contacts show up. I've seen people who couldn't remember their own email using the app within seconds on a feature phone. Try that with Facebook.
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#118Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is a pretty big market. 320,000,000 people, most with at least some disposable income. There are also plenty of advertisers that want to market their products to Americans, which means you can choose between ad-sponsored or for-pay business models.
I think the attraction of the US market is that is big AND homogeneous: the EU in its entirety for example has more people and comparable wealth, but it's made up of dozens of countries, each with its own language and regulatory laws, which complicate the development of any app/service.
The laws are actually quite uniform, it's actually easy to release an app in multiple languages using one company in the UK, for example.
The hard part is getting partners or marketers everywhere, making sure they understand what you're trying to accomplish, making sure they don't rip you off and start their own clone with all your users and somehow providing support for all those people speaking different languages.
And of course, then there's the payments - receiving/sending payments is very hard, every country has their own preferred method that does not integrate with others at all.
Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
My problem with Firefox OS is that they don't add any value over what is already possible in modern mobile OS. All of them have a web browser of some sort.
It's not about what is possible todo, it's about replacing feature phones in developing markets. They can't effort "cheap" androids, neither iphones. And if they get the money for an "cheap" android they don't have money for the development equipment.
Yes