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Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

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Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#131

Post by waps »

SunboX wrote: post #107
SunboX wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Firefox OS - Answering global challenges" slides by Christian Heilmann: http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/developerweek

I think this is a pipe dream. Cheapest android cellphone is only $35 [1]. That is only possible because they're leftover stock of a phone that was produced using leftover stock of an ex-android phone chipset.

[1] http://dx.com/s/android%2bphone?PriceSort=up&category=511

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#132

Post by sspiff »

pjmlp wrote: post #47
thewarrior wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even I dont know exactly how it works. I think Nokia gave them access to some private API.

J2ME is not Nokia specific.

No, but it is not uncommon for J2ME apps to have a different package for certain vendors, or even for specific series or models of certain vendors. Those packages often utilize vendor-specific APIs or work around limitations or quirks in their J2ME stack. Opera's J2ME application took this to extremes, with dozens of different versions of a specific release.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#133

Post by sspiff »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #110
joelthelion wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also plenty of companies targeting the US market. The rest of the world? Not so much. To give you an example: there is no reddit equivalent in French. The closest things we have are a few French-speaking subreddits that have very few subscribers since reddit scares people who don't speak English before they can reach the French-speaking subreddits. We also have a few very poor quality reddit rip-offs with n…

What happened to the French minitel users; where are they now? Was there a particular social forum that ruled minitel - did it transition to the web?

Minitel adoption was never as big as with the current Internet, and users didn't suddenly migrate from one to the other. Minitel mostly bled to death as the Internet grew in popularity.

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#134

Post by sspiff »

merloen wrote: post #113
yummyfajitas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The smorgasbord of languages and cultures makes it harder to target though. But German, French and Spanish markets are big in their own right, especially if you consider you can reach other territories with them as well. (Austria, Switzerland and to some extent eastern Europe with German; Canada and much of connected Africa with French; Phillipines and Latin America with Spanish.)

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#135

Post by adventured »

keerthiko wrote: post #69

This. 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…

"how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger / Hangouts?"

That's not the right question to begin with.

The right question on this is: are those instant messenger users on WhatsApp worth much financially, will they ever produce financial returns, such that you justify $19 billion in any respect. I say no, the value of messenger bytes is nearly zero unless you can hold the users hostage and extract large sums from them (as AT&T and Verizon did on SMS). All user actions are not created equal in terms of the economic value they generate - one network of actions is not inherently as valuable as another; this premise will eventually burst the myth of Snapchat and WhatsApp being worth their current valuations.

How much are all those users worth? Not much if they don't actually generate cash, which is why webmail and traditional instant messaging is worthless financially.

WhatsApp was a threat to them, and that demonstrates just how financially dark Facebook's future is. Facebook will have to perpetually destroy its shareholder value buying up non-performing businesses to try to stall those upstarts from destroying Facebook's temporary ad platform. Facebook is likely to get Craigslist'd (replaced by an endless parade of dirt cheap social apps with no business prospects), because the real financial value of what it does is low.

The app itself is very useful to its users, but it's not financially worth much, no different than Gmail or Yahoo Mail (which both have hundreds of millions of users that send bazillions of messages per day).

Take away: the messages aren't worth much financially; the users aren't worth much financially. Five years from now, people are going to look back on all of this, and think it was crazy how much was being paid for "users" and "messages."

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#137

Post by pjmlp »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #122
pjmlp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My old cheap feature phone had a good enough browser already.

I think so, but having a little more RAM can't hurt. I can't even load up 2 HN pages at the same time.

Do you also read both at the same time?

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#138

Post by pjmlp »

sspiff wrote: post #132
pjmlp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

J2ME is not Nokia specific.

No, but it is not uncommon for J2ME apps to have a different package for certain vendors, or even for specific series or models of certain vendors. Those packages often utilize vendor-specific APIs or work around limitations or quirks in their J2ME stack. Opera's J2ME application took this to extremes, with dozens of different versions of a specific release.

I know, once upon a time (2003), I did some J2ME development for Sharp and Nokia handsets.

Is the J2ME version of WhatsApp only available on Nokia devices?

Re: Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App

#140

Post by edraferi »

brisance wrote: post #33

Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat? It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total…

I don't think they're necessarily looking to integrate the user bases that way. If Facebook's mission is simply to "connect everything ” then this gets them closer to that goal. Whatsapp profits are note Facebook profits, and Facebook is connecting everyone that Whatsapp used to connect.

Facebook wants as many users as possible, connected to rapture in as many ways as possible. This is a big win for that, and will continue to reap benefits as the Whatsapp user base grows.

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