Mobility Management Predictions

Here is some market research information I compiled when we were still working on Virago’s business plan.

Market Segmentation of business apps by OS platform – Android is already a growing platform for business applications

Gartner’s forecast of sales of devices by OS:

Created Strategic Partnerships – Details

In my resume I mention that I have experience creating and managing strategic partnerships. Here are a couple of examples of the types of partnerships I have created in the past at Zaxis Technologies:

• Problem – start up company needs to market to customers with practically no marketing budget.
• Qualcomm’s Brew platform needed to be targeted by the mobile applications developers and publishers in order to gain acceptance and growth, but developers were more used to developing for the Java based devices.
• I created a partnership with the Qualcomm Brew team and Verizon Wireless (first Brew carrier) to become part of the Brew development eco-system and port applications for their target publishers to the Brew devices. Please read this article as it has a nice quote from Qualcomm about Zaxis and how we benefited the developer community: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zaxistm-technologies-announces-its-prizmtm-solution-to-facilitate-porting-of-brewtm-based-applications-72586877.html. In return I was referred to these high level customers, I was given free access to the Brew Labs (critical for ensuring quality, device access, support from Qualcomm) and also received support from Verizon for the pre-release devices and also referrals to their customers.

Kyocera Wireless – as 2nd tier device manufacturer, Kyocera wanted to have access to top tier publishers (EA, Sony, Disney) for their content to be pre-loaded on their devices and also to provide these developers an easier way to get their apps onto their phones. This was to help differentiate their phones from the more top tier manufacturers.

• I put an MOU in place to have Kyocera provide Zaxis all the support we required in developing our technology – this included pre-commercial device access, technical information etc.
• We promoted Kyocera devices and included ports for their devices at no cost to developers (Kyocera paid for them)
• Kyocera added Zaxis as a trusted partner on their website by putting our logo and link on their partners website.

How I got my first game porting customers at Zaxis!

I have been working with the business development and product management people at Qualcomm putting on Brew users group meetings. During those meetings, the attending engineers mostly complained about the difficulty of creating and then tracking all the different versions of their mobile Brew applications, and then testing them to ensure passage through the NSTL labs for certification.

This is really how my idea was born, that the so called “killer app” was not necessarily the coolest game, but it was finding a way to get that application deployed to all the mobile devices and across various carriers.

Equipped with some quickly made brochures describing our new Porting Service, I went to the E3 gaming conference to attend the Mobile Game Development track meeting. On the panel at this meeting were the heads of Sony Pictures Mobile and THQ Wireless. I sat in the audience of about 150 game developers who were eager to sell their mobile games to these companies. One of the main themes that was discussed during this panel discussion was the pain of having to understand the devices and getting the applications to work on them and then managing all the versions. I was very excited by the end, and while the panelists were swarmed by the game developers, I waited my turn, and then simply mentioned to them that “We do this porting thing you just complained about!” I had contracts from both of them within three weeks, and we were on our way to porting “Hello Kitty” apps for THQ and “Wheel of fortune”, “Qbert”, and “Charlie’s Angels” for Sony!