You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead
|
|
|
Why are Swedes leading mobile development?
Sweden is one of the mobile world’s creative hotbeds, so the Inq took it upon itself to pay a visit to the northern region and see whether its success is down to its education system, the infrastructure, their consensual management style, or something else altogether.
It’s rare, in technology, to have the luxury of starting a project with a vague plan and then seeing where it takes you.
But that appears to be the case in the vibrant forge of mobile technology that is Sweden. Universities, such as Lund in southern Sweden, pump out graduates with the seeds of an idea. Better still there’s a fertile environment that enables them to develop.
The universities develop the intellectual capital, but it’s honed at employers like Ericsson. Small wonder that so much venture capital is attracted to the area to fund new startups for one of IT’s fastest growing new markets, mobile software.
Not that everyone needs venture capital. Take Malmo based Illusion Labs. It was founded by two graphics developers barely out of university, after they’d seen their first employer (The Astonishing Tribe - or TAT as we like to call them) mushroom from a new startup to a multi million dollar outfit in a few years.
Inspiration is one thing, but founders Carl Loodberg and Andreas Alptun didn’t really have a plan to start with. “We wanted to do something, without any idea what,” admits CEO Loodberg.
Then they saw an Iphone and thought it might be fun to create a game that exploited the tilting mechanism of the new phone. They created Labyrinth, a game where you tilt your Iphone to steer a ball through a course. Ad agency BMB saw the game and flew them to London to ask them to produce a version that promoted its client, Carlsberg.
When their tilting glass ad won the Cannes Silver Lion, they had no idea that this is an award that ad creatives will die for. To Loodberg and Alptun it just meant they had enough money to fund their next game.
Suddenly, a gaming enterprise was born. Since they were lucky enough to get their products into the Apple Istore in the early days, they don’t need to market themselves too much. Since Labyrinth put Illusion Labs on top of the Istore chart, they’ve pretty much got themselves a ready made brand.
The next, eagerly awaited game was Touchgrind, a version of ‘finger skateboarding’ for the mobile. “By this time we had really good contacts with Apple and they put banners up on the site and we had free ads,” says Loodberg.
Apple loved them as their games brought the best out in the Iphone. Labyrinth showed off the handset’s accelerometer, while Touchgrind put the Iphone’s multi touch features in the best possible light.
Developing games for the handset market is a bit like getting a tune on the music charts. The product costs five or ten dollars, it makes an easy present and there’s a definite rush around Xmas. Touchgrind was brought out for the winter holiday season and sold 25,000 copies on Christmas day.
In writing games for the Iphone, the one major difference with the music industry is there’s no overbearing, number crunching Svengali figure or industry executive obsessed with feedback from focus groups. Loodberg says the aim of the company is to keep artistic independence. “We’re careful not to upset our customers, and we’ll never bung in ads just to make a bit of extra money,” says Loodberg.
Round the corner, in another converted warehouse in what used to be Malmo’s docklands, another startup has emerged with similarly unfocused beginnings.
Polar Rose grew out of founder Jan Erik Solem’s Lund University project to create algorithms to analyse images. The original intention was to analyse 2D images and, through mathematical analysis of how pixel patterns and light and shade change, use that raw data to build the most likely 3D image.
But the ability to analyse pictures lent itself to other applications. Since venture capitalists are obsessed with social networking, Polar Rose’s initial product reflected that fashionable focus.
Most photos, if not labelled within 48 hours of being taken, will sit on some storage media, untouched for the rest of their lives. Polar Rose's software will enable users to analyse the picture data, and see if it matches known entities. The idea is that it will help social media users to find people in their pictures, explains CEO Nikolas Nyholm. But surely there are more lucrative users of this clever image analysis engine.
Why not use this digital sniffer dog to fight crime? You show the system a photo of, say, a notorious football hooligan. The software takes in and analyses the fiend's features, then goes roaring off round the Internet, looking for any identical digital patterns on crowd scenes. If the hooligan's face is detected on some footage of a football riot, the police would then have enough evidence to arrest him. Or possibly extract a confession.
"People are free to use the technology as they like, but that wasn’t the application we originally had in mind," says Nyholm.
That’s the point about these mobile technology startups. They don't start out with the killer application, but gradually evolve one. µ
Share this:
Share
Every body understands that modern life is not very cheap, however people require cash for different things and not every one gets enough money. So to receive good a href="http://lowest-rate-loans.com/topics/business-loans" business loans /a and just car loan will be a proper solution.
How close is Malmo to Finland, well if you're driving, a long way, but it's less than 600kms by plane to Helsinki, which lets face it, is far more practical than a company in New York working with one in California.
Anyway, my point was that the region has a long history of mobile technology, so it's no great shock that they are at the forefront.
AMPS? If you claim that Ericsson started with the AMPS, you could not be much more wrong. In Scandinavia there were live 0G mobile networks already in 1971 and 1G analog network called NMT was first opened in 1981 (first call made already in 1978 and AMPS was introduced as late as 1983). Both Ericsson and Nokia were big companies in this NMT business and they were the main innovators at this time. Also both of these companies were involved in the worlds first commercial GSM network built in Finland. So yes, Nokia and Ericsson have been big innovators on mobile networks already from 0G until now in 4G. Nokia was also big innovator with 2G/3G phones and only lately they have lost the ball with bad design and sticking with Symbian S60...
If you think Malmö is anywhere close to Finland you need to visit this great site right here maps.google.com.
Ericsson and Sony Ericsson both have huge research and development sites in Lund, surely that will generate some form of offspring.
All you Swedes and Finns can lowball and steal all this fabulous Canadian tech paid for with Canadian taxpayer money.
Choke on it and die. (Not an RIM employee)
So your sitting there sipping your Latte' and your buddy drops his phone in your car. He is a terrorist and his phone has a GPS enabled chipset originally developed by the clandestine services to track its agents without them knowing. The same clandestine agency was responsible for moving map technology which is now employed to track you buddy and put him in Jail.
In a case of mistaken identity you are carted off and incarcerated without the privilege of due process because you are guilty before proven innocent. They kick the crap out of you and tell you to shut up or they will kick the crap out of you until you do. They don't want to hear your story because they have heard it all before. They have heard people beg and offer money even sexual favors if they will only let you go.
They get you to the agency interrogation area and discover you really are who you say you are and they owe you a big maya culpa. The plane trip took 2.5 hours each way and the driving took a couple of hours. Your car is impounded and searched high and low and they discover you like wearing ladies under garments. They hand you the keys to your car while they smirk at you.. Your not aware why they are laughing.
Its 8 PM they day is shot. The customers who you were planning to meet decided you were a flake and have moved their business to another firm. Your boss doesn't believe you were abducted and fires you for not even calling and letting him know you were abducted. Meanwhile... several other smucks are going through the same ordeal not knowing what they have done or who these people really are.
You have now been subjected to the fascist state of the new world order, just because you buddy dropped his phone in your car.
You get home and your wife see your all frumpy, you were supposed to take her out to dinner that night but you smell like ass and she is now suspicious that you are lying to her about the whole ordeal just to cover up something else.
You clean yourself up and she calls the friend who you were meeting and agree on a late night dinner. You get in the car and on the floor board of your car are ladies under garments you had so carefully stashed under the seat of the car. She looks over at you as she picks up the silk stocking and .. you know.. and says you lying M..f..er.
You have been violated three ways from Sunday and now your wife wants a divorce because... your buddy dropped his phone in your car. He isn't really a terrorist, he just has the same name as another guy who is on the terrorist watch list and you know the rest of the story...
Conclusion.. Due process.. Its gone.. Your rights are gone.. Martial Law.. and chips in your fingers.. its coming.. be aware.. get prepared.. go to www.prisonplanet.com
Nokia is not big because creativity its because people need to save investment like buying toyota instead of farari. people then were scarred of too hightech phone and even till 2007 for touchscreen that these could break. i see in american movies that they are still fan old old clamshell+motrolla.
Ericsson strated with AMPS sets but motrolla (talk-about) captured most gsm then. motrolla's not departing from dildo type designs caused their demise.
Iphone, it was a clone of unreleased gphone. that gphone design gave mutiple orgasms just by looks and even if today that design is released will outsell, iphone, kindle and upcoming SE-Aino.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/03/google-getting-more-serious-about-the-gphone/
point is american companies caught market and creativity time and again but strange factors and perhaps keeping chinese factories forbidden, gave Nokia etc room.
Now again tables have turned Nokia is no more no matter N900. Samsung, HTC reign has begun. Nokia doesnt make memory, screens, most computer equipment, wimax... samsung does and htc (taiwan) is neghbour next door. Outside Europe(LTE,HSPA) is Wimax everywhere and Wimax field is home turf of far-east.
Could it have anything to do with...
Ericsson a large, long-standing telephony (both mobile and wired) company being Swedish, and Nokia, a huge, long-standing mobile company being Finnish, which is next door?
So not great shocks really... Now if you discovered Switzerland was leading naval design.....
Come on, you missed the country by one: it is Finns (Nokia) that are leading mobile development.
There are over 1 000 000 000 Nokia mobile phone users worldwide.