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- Native Or Web? Bizness Apps Adds HTML5 Platform To Let SMBs Create Their Own Apps — For Both
- Smart Mobile And The Thin Cloud
- Mobile Ad Network Millennial Media Saw Nearly $50 Million In Revenue In 2010
| Native Or Web? Bizness Apps Adds HTML5 Platform To Let SMBs Create Their Own Apps — For Both Posted: 27 Aug 2011 10:22 PM PDT  Bizness Apps, the startup that gives small businesses the tools to quickly and easily build mobile apps, launched in October 2010 and has been growing like gangbusters, reaching over 1,000 applications, 10 languages, and over 20 countries in less than 9 months. It also recently partnered with WuFoo to give SMBS the ability to create and seamlessly add contact forms, online surveys, and invitations to their apps. The startup also has an interesting founding story that provides some useful lessons for your entrepreneurs. Check out our April coverage here. Bizness Apps’s value proposition is simple: The startup wants to make mobile apps affordable, customizable, and simple to make for the small business owner. Thus, the startup offers a DIY iPhone, iPad, and Android app platform that enables SMBs to create, edit, and manage mobile apps without any programming experience required. You start with a template, customize them to suit your business, and then Bizness Apps makes them native apps and distributes them on iTunes and the Android Marketplace. The startup is not without competitors in this space, as iSites, SwebApps and Mobile Roadie are targeting a similar endpoint. But Bizness Apps has a real advantage in the fact that it’s product is easy to use, designed well, yet remains affordable. The price for using either their iOS or Android platform is $39, while those that want to create both Android and iOS apps pay $59. This affordability is very appealing to small businesses looking to take advantage of mobile business without having to fork over thousands of dollars to do so. Native apps are great and all, you might say, but what about this supposed HTML5 revolution? Where my web apps at? Nothwithstanding the fact that there’s been a hot debate over whether app developers should go for HTML5 or native apps (as evidenced by MG’s post on the subject back in February), Bizness Apps Founder and CEO Andrew Gazdecki said that he thinks the best approach is to make a bet on mobile as a whole — not one or the other. That’s why the startup is today announcing the launch of an HTML5 version of their DIY mobile app platform for small businesses. With this new web functionality, users of the service are now able to create nearly identical mobile experiences for every mobile platform including iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and so on — they can go native or HTML5, or both. For an extra $10 a month. As part of the HTML5 platform launch, Bizness Apps has built a QR code-enabled mobile marketing template to provide SMBs with a simple and affordable way to market their mobile apps to their customers. The template image, as seen above, is automatically created (with the ability to print) with one click from inside the HTML5 platform. The idea here, Gazdecki says, is to help direct a business’ customers to the appropriate app based on what type of mobile device they’re using. For example, if a user has an Android phone, they would scan the Android themed QR code to be directed to the business’ Android app. Availability on native and HTML5 is another important piece to the puzzle in building a platform agnostic app development tool for SMBs, and with its affordability, and new mobile marketing capabilities, Bizness Apps has become an exciting platform and looks well-positioned to weather the native vs. web apps debate. The startup is offering a coupon code for 25 free apps for TC readers, which you can check out by signing up here. The coupon code is “techcrunch”. For more, check out the video below: Bizness Apps makes iPhone and Android apps affordable and simple for small businesses. We’re a do-it-yourself iPhone app platform that allows small businesses to easily create, edit, and manage...
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| Smart Mobile And The Thin Cloud Posted: 27 Aug 2011 08:20 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Ventures and CEO of newly funded just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. —All that is solid melts into air. There will be no web 3.0! When HP CEO Leo Apotheker announced that the company was seeking options for its consumer PC business and abandoning the hardware mobile business its stock dropped 20%. When Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, after a 12 hour pullback, the stock rose to go above the previous close within 48 hours. These two stories of corporate change are widely discussed, often in terms that assume the men at the center of each company are the story. However, something far bigger is in play, and it will transform the entire software ecosystem over the next 5 years. The changes will be so dramatic that the current discussions of a bubble will appear silly. Huge companies will fail and even bigger new companies will be formed. The fundamentals of the era we are at the birth of have the following characteristics{
This entire shift is being driven by the ecosystem that started with the iPhone. Android, by contrast, is a backward looking architecture. It is a means of distributing old web services to a mobile audience, but it is not transforming software to meet the opportunities mobile affords or the simpler, new architectures it opens up. Looked at from this point of view, HP is right to want to get out of the hardware business. It's game over there for the next few years. Apple has a huge lead. Google still has a shot at being relevant because of Android, but it needs huge changes to the Android philosophy to accomplish that. HTML5 will not be enough to modernize the web 2.0 ecosystem for a mobile future. A new ecosystem is emerging, driven by user delight with a more decentralized, user-centric mobile application ecosystem. Facebook will be challenged to retain its lead in social networking unless it can pivot to an entirely different, decentralized, architecture. But as the most centralized of the web 2.0 success stories, that won't be either obvious or easy until it is too late. The next 10 years are going to be wonderfully interesting. And the thanks goes to . . . Apple and Steve Jobs. Think different is no longer a choice. Photo credit: Pedro Szekely Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer,... Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It... Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of...
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| Mobile Ad Network Millennial Media Saw Nearly $50 Million In Revenue In 2010 Posted: 27 Aug 2011 03:30 PM PDT  We’ve known that mobile ad network Millennial Media more than tripled revenue in 2010 from 2009 and achieved profitability. But we didn’t know how much the mobile ad network brought in, until now. In the recent 2011 Inc 500 list, Millennial revealed that it saw $47.8 million in 2010 revenue, up over 3,000 percent from 2007 revenue of $1.5 million. And while we don’t know what Millennial’s net income is, we know the company is profitable. Millennial is one of the largest remaining independent ad networks after AdMob was bought by Google and Apple acquired Quattro. There’s no doubt that many technology companies have eyed Millennial as an acquisition target, but the company has managed to remain independent despite the increased consolidation taking place in the mobile ad space. In addition to Millennial’s independent ad network, the company also operates and manages private mobile ad networks for large media companies and conglomerates that have multiple apps and sites, essentially powering a self-service ad network for these companies. And Millennial has a deal with a "prominent internet media company" (but declines to name the company) that has completely outsourced its mobile advertising to Millennial. For basis of comparison, AdMob reportedly had a $100 million revenue run rate when it was acquired in 2009, which could have put its actual revenue at $40 million (AdMob split its revenues 60/40 with publishers). It’s unclear if Millennial’s $47.8 million in 2010 revenue is post-split. Hopefully we’ll see more details of Millennial’s financials when the company files its S-1 for a public offering in the coming months. CEO and founder Paul Palmieri has had ambitions of taking the company public, and the timing may be right considering this seems to be the year of the tech company IPO. In May, Bloomberg reported that Millennial was talking to bankers about an IPO, which could come in the Fall or in early 2012 and would value the company at a whopping $700 million to $1 billion (AdMob was sold to Google for $750 million). Considering how most companies refuse to reveal exact financials when they are private, it’s always interesting to see revenue numbers pre-IPO. Millennial Media is the leading independent mobile advertising and data company. Millennial Media commands an impressive share of the mobile display advertising market. The company's technology, tools and services...
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