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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

#221

Post by dchuk »

gst wrote: post #193
r00fus wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple iMessage, can't inter-operate between Apple and Android devices (very stupid tactic, it will get marginalized). Apple's iMessage works fine with Android in the western developed world where you can get unlimited/cheap SMS. Also android support won't help iMessage in markets like India where there are very very many feature (j2me) phones out there. Apple and WhatsApp have different goals. FB is far more threat…

> Apple's iMessage works fine with Android in the western developed world where you can get unlimited/cheap SMS. No, it doesn't. It works in simple cases as long as none of the iMessage participants invites someone else into the conversation and starts a group conversation. Once that happens you can only participate in the conversation if you have an actual iMessage client.

That isn't true. I'm in a 3 year old group chat with 4 iPhone friends and 1 Android friend and it works perfectly fine. The Android friend just gets text messages, the rest of us get iMessages.

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

#222

Post by jedberg »

joelthelion wrote: post #99
jrockway wrote: post #80

Earlier 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.

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…

Funny story about that. We (reddit) had a long debate about what the default UI and content should be back when we internationalized (2008 I think?). Should we use the Accept-Language header to select both the UI and the content, or just the UI? We started by making the assumption that if your preferred language was French, for example, you'd want French content.

We got a ton of feedback from French speakers that they preferred the English content, so we ended up settling on selecting a UI based on the A-L header but giving the default English content (unless you specifically set it otherwise).

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

#223

Post by jrockway »

jotm wrote: post #119
Kurtz79 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I believe he means homogeneous as in "speak the same language, share a similar culture". If you tell a French person he's exactly the same as a German person, he will probably disagree.

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

#224

Post by koolkao »

gst wrote: post #193
r00fus wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple iMessage, can't inter-operate between Apple and Android devices (very stupid tactic, it will get marginalized). Apple's iMessage works fine with Android in the western developed world where you can get unlimited/cheap SMS. Also android support won't help iMessage in markets like India where there are very very many feature (j2me) phones out there. Apple and WhatsApp have different goals. FB is far more threat…

> Apple's iMessage works fine with Android in the western developed world where you can get unlimited/cheap SMS. No, it doesn't. It works in simple cases as long as none of the iMessage participants invites someone else into the conversation and starts a group conversation. Once that happens you can only participate in the conversation if you have an actual iMessage client.

As a Google Voice user I can't get messages from iMessage, and the sender doesn't get a delivery failure notice.

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

#225

Post by dsushant »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #97
jrockway wrote: post #80

Earlier 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…

Internet penetration in India is at the lower end of your estimate - 124 million in 2012 (1).

In contrast, the wireless subscriber base was 875 million in 2013 (2).

Source: 1. “Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia's Next Superpower” by McKinsey; Published 2013 2. TRAI: Highlights on Telecom Subscription Data as on 31st October, 2013

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

#226

Post by aestra »

yohanatan wrote: post #216
twic wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp is different to most messaging apps in that it runs on dumb phones (featurephones), not just smartphones. It's different to built-in text messaging in that it uses data rather than SMS. Dumb phones are a lot cheaper than smartphones, and for most people, data is cheaper than SMS. There are an awful lot of people in the world who can't afford a smartphone or a serious SMS habit. Those people use WhatsApp. The…

That sounds rather trivial to me. Facebook has a huge userbase and I'm sure that if they made FB Messenger run on J2ME as well, it would have massive uptake. Seems like Zuck just wanted to spread the love around a bit and generate some news (or has some serious lack of confidence in the competence of his own developers).

A difference is you don't have to create a WhatsApp account, it just uses your phone number. It is plug and play.

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

#227

Post by yohanatan »

aestra wrote: post #226
yohanatan wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds rather trivial to me. Facebook has a huge userbase and I'm sure that if they made FB Messenger run on J2ME as well, it would have massive uptake. Seems like Zuck just wanted to spread the love around a bit and generate some news (or has some serious lack of confidence in the competence of his own developers).

A difference is you don't have to create a WhatsApp account, it just uses your phone number. It is plug and play.

Trivial to implement.

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

#228

Post by greatsuccess »

I have to say this is the wrong conclusion. J2ME and the stuff that runs it runs on is in the past.

Its simply a waste of time. So Im not sure why the OP focused on this. Let's not make up reasons this guy got bought out beyond a few dinners with Zuck and a whole lotta luck.

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

#230

Post by netcan »

corresation wrote: post #210
netcan wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty much fictional, or rather arbitrary because you can draw the line between low and high end wherever you want. I actually got it from here: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/12/idc-data-shows-66-... And it turns out I misrepresented the fictional statistic. The "real" number is 66%. Though I suppose if you count older mid tier models (this counts sales) still in use, 80% might be pretty close. IMO yo…

The "real" number is 66% While I don't normally agree with dismissing something from the source -- in this case Apple Insider -- the way that the article digs to try to generate their manufactured numbers borders on comical. Secondly, the metric that it is "junk" (the article's word) because the ASP is $200+ is asinine, if you will. As is the notion that such makes it a "feature phone" (where ASPs were in the LOW dou…

I agree. OTOH, justifying with facts that there are a lot of Android phones in use that are several steps under the S4 in terms of hardware and data/wifi availability & affordability is almost superflous.

Androids are penetrating markets that were never penetrated by PCs or the web or even residential electricity.

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