Constant Contact Labs Developer Blog

• Mobile Startup Conference Posted Wednesday, June 9, 2010 Huan Lai 0 Comments

  
  On Monday, I went to the Evening of Mobile Startups at the MIT Museum and talked to a bunch of early stage mobile startups. It was a pretty interesting event, giving a pretty good snapshot of “what is hot” in the mobile space. In the rest of the article I’ll discuss the things that I noticed and some of my own personal take on things.

  The first and most obvious thing that I noticed is that despite the fact that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Developer Program was the premier sponsor for the event, not that many of the exhibits actually ever mention the BlackBerry. A large majority of the companies that had booths had developed iPhone applications with a slightly smaller number than that either planning to or already supporting an Android port as well. There were a few who were working with BlackBerries, but the only one that ever mentioned Windows Phones was Microsoft’s own booth and Palm’s WebOS was more or less unrepresented. The lack of support for BlackBerries was a little surprising to me, but the lack of love for Windows Phones and WebOS was pretty much expected, with the Windows 7 Phone’s success still up in the air and the lack of any future plans for a successor to the Palm Pre.

  The other very noticable trend is the booming interest in taking advantage of the fact that most, if not all, successful smartphones are location-enabled. Many of the apps on display were doing something with location, whether it may be finding things to do around you or location based marketing. Some of the applications on display were pretty interesting, but none stood out very much. Most of what I could see from the booths were very similar to already exisiting products or, in a few instances, very similar to what someone a few booths down was also building.

  The event itself was overall a worthwhile experience. There are a few products that I really liked, such as Goby which is a “search engine” for things to do, such as upcoming events. It also lists things to do, places to eat, etc, but that is something you can probably just go on yelp, Urbanspoon or one of the many other sources for the same information. Though their listing of upcoming live events is something that I haven’t found done well elsewhere. The next time I’m in need of something to do, I’ll give them a try. There were quite a few people doing location-based marketing, allowing users to post and find deals that are currently going on in their location. Of these are Vendee, Sayagle, Peekaboo and Appswell. I look forward to seeing if any of these ideas make it big.

  Was anyone else at the conference or go to a similar one? What was your experience like?

   

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