Last week at Apps World buzzdoes the app distribution tool exhibited at the show and CEO and founder of the tool, Assaf Kolirin presented in the New Platforms and Technology Developer Zone.

buzzdoes is an automated word-of-mouth tool that turns apps users into apps distributors. All it takes is a click on the buzzdoes icon for users to recommend an app to a selected list of friends – they just need to pick the ones they want. The result is that each happy user can steer dozens of new ones your way.

The ‘recommender’ is rewarded for every download that occurs as a result of his/her recommendation. It’s a win-win situation. The users gain from their goodwill and the developers gain new users. buzzdoes, have added a social aspect to the tool, where users can see their friends’ applications. This serves as an advertisement area where the developer can earn money from every download that occurs through the buzzdoes button on his/her application creating a new revenue stream.

“A few years ago, I was involved in developing applications for both the games and business markets. We thought our ideas were great and couldn’t wait to get them in front of users and we started looking for ways to market our apps,” says Assaf, “This is when I had my Eureka moment. Why not use the most reliable and influential marketing model – word-of-mouth? It worked for Gmail, it worked for Facebook. Why wouldn’t it work for my app?”

If you want to find out more about buzzdoes you can view their website here

This year #AppsWorld welcomes back the Facebook Developers Garage, hosted by e27, to the Asia event who will be providing hands-on, practical advice for grass-roots developers looking to get into the fast-moving and lucrative
world of Facebook development. A great opportunity for developers looking to crack the hot topic that is social media.

On Thursday 1 September at 1630 e27 will host the Facebook developers ‘meet & greet’ session which will include a talk on the latest issues for developers in social media and an introduction to Facebook’s new regional team including Alexander Klienberg (Facebook’s Head of Platform Partnerships in Asia-Pacific/Japan) and highlights of the plans for the region as well as networking opportunities.

This is a free-to-attend, hour and a half workshop for the local developer community, with advice and insight into how the platform is evolving and how to make the most of these new developments; providing an arena for developers to get stuck in, explore the platform, collaborate and test out ideas under the supervision of experts.

The Facebook Developer Garage forms part of a series of in-depth app developer workshops taking place on 1-2 September at the Suntec Centre, Singapore. Developers can attend this free workshop track, featuring sessions on Microsoft, Android, Samsung and more. To find out more please click here.

Related articles

• Free Microsoft developers track at #AppsWorld Asia (apps-world.net)
• Free developer sessions at #AppsWorld Asia (apps-world.net)
• What to expect at Social Media World Forum (e27.sg)

With some of the largest app players halting their in-app sales after new Apple guidelines were re-enforced this week, does Apple run the risk of causing damage to the app start up industry before it even takes off?

Apple, who current takes 30% commission from all digital content bought through iOS apps have this week flagged up their new guidelines (released in February 2011) which requires publishers and retailers to remove all links to their own websites to prevent potential in-app sales taking place outside of the app, to protect Apple’s commission results.

As a result Google temporarily took down its ebook reading app and Amazon updated its Kindle app removing the link to its store, both parties advised customers to visit their e-stores outside of their apps via Safari.

Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, said: “Our philosophy is simple – when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30% share – when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100% and Apple earns nothing.”

Whilst it’s possible for Amazon and Google to have confidence that customers will make the extra effort to visit their websites to make purchases,  does Apple risk crippling small independent start ups with its hefty commission?  On the flip side can you really put a price on the exposure and access to the mass market that comes from being associated with Apple and iOS? It seems, for now anyway, you can – and it’s 30% commission.

This topic and the broader topic of monetising apps plays a key role in day two of the Apps World Europe agenda.

To register for your place now click here.

Android platforms are on the agenda (literally) for this year’s Apps World Asia conference with our Droid World workshop built into our developers track. The workshop plans to look at framework and API, development and debugging tools and improving App performance & user experience amongst other aspects of android development.

The workshop is being run by Code Android – a great online community for discussion and news on the latest goings-on for android developers in Asia. It is part of the Android Developer and User Group and is built to help Android users as well as developers from Singapore, Malaysia and APAC countries to learn about the platform. On top of their informative and discussion led website their Twitter and Facebook presence has a good emphasis on knowledge sharing.

We are delighted to welcome Nokia as Platinum sponsors of Apps World taking place on the 30th Nov & 1st Dec.

Nokia will be running a workshop within the Developer Zone from 2pm on the 30th Nov, outlining plans for the developer experience and simplify its offering with a focus on the Qt development framework, where you will find:

-    A cross-platform framework that creates huge opportunities for future Symbian and MeeGo smartphones.

-    A robust, tried and tested application development framework that has delivered thousands of use-cases across desktop, mobile and embedded operating systems.

-    A greatly reduced development effort through intuitive APIs, as well as 70% reduction in lines of code.

-    A framework that compiles your code to native, and will not slow it down through runtime.

Join Nokia at AppsWorld to see Qt demos and the latest Nokia hardware!  Register for your free exhibition & developers pass here

You can arrange a meeting with the Nokia team at stand here

We’re pleased to welcome Imano as one of latest exhibitors who have confirmed that they will be joining us at Apps World, on the 30th Nov & 1st Dec.

Imano will be demonstrating some of their recent apps for high profile brands such as O2, Conde Nast and Ray-Ban in the exhibition, not to mention TVGuide.co.uk, the UK’s leading TV listings app

Mark Lister, Managing Director for Imano, will be sharing his ten top tips for launching a successful mobile app to promote your brand.

Mark’s 20 minute speech will be taking place at 1430 on day two in the marketing stream.

Jane Linton, Business Development Director for Imano will also be presenting (on day one at 10.30) talking about their recent Stella Artois Case study – ‘Building an iPhone app with location based augmented reality’.

A bit more about Imano – Imano are a full service digital agency with a strong heritage in e-commerce, creative, digital marketing and, over the past two years, significant success in the design and development of iPhone and iPad applications. These core strengths enable Imano to retain clients for the longer term. Imano work with ABInBev, Citi and Nestle and have launched apps for high profile brands such as General Motors and TSL (the World University Rankings).

acrossair is the R&D arm of the company and specialises in developing innovative solutions for iPhone & iPad, including augmented reality.  Their first application was TVGuide.co.uk, which reached No.1 in the UK and has over 1 million downloads.

Click here Imano to arrange a meeting with Imano at Apps World later next month.

Learn how to turn your code into cash

Join Intel at Apps World in London on Wednesday 1st December for a free developer workshop to learn how to make money by selling your apps on the Intel AppUp Center.

Enrollment in the Intel AppUp Developer program is free for a limited time. Intel will be discussing revenue opportunities for Adobe AIR* and Windows* C/C++ developers, as well as how you can optimise existing iOS, Windows and runtime applications for netbooks.

Hear why you should develop for the Intel AppUp Center, learn about SDKs with live coding walkthroughs, listen to other developers already involved in the program, and talk to Intel experts in thier staffed open lab. Bring your code and questions! Want to see what to expect? View videos from past Application Labs.

Drinks and snacks will be served throughout the workshop. All attendees will have the opportunity to win a top-of-the-range netbook* and any developer who submits their application to the Intel AppUp Center at the event could win an expenses-paid trip to Mobile World Congress* in February!

Location based services and mobile advertising are some of the key areas of expertise that NAVTEQ brings to the Apps World event.   The NAVTEQ developers network allows developers to connect and harness location based applications over multiple devices and platforums.

Follow them on twitter to win monthly prizes

About NAVTEQ
NAVTEQ Network for Developers™ (NN4D) is an online developer community (NN4D.com) with complete development resources, information and technical support for creating location-aware solutions using NAVTEQ products and services, including complimentary sample NAVTEQ® map data.

NAVTEQ is the leading global provider of digital map, traffic and location data that enables navigation and location-based platforms around the world.  NAVTEQ maps span 78 countries and territories on six continents.  NAVTEQ is headquartered in Chicago, IL, USA, with more than 5,000 employees worldwide located in 211 offices in 48 countries.

They will be at the show exhibiting if you want to come along and hook up on the 30th November & 1st December, register for your free exhibitor pass here

Full details of the Workshop passes can be found here

Intersting article on the shelf life of apps stores looking at how developers are promoting themselves in an ever crowded market.  Bango are a mobile analytics company that provides the technology that powers commerce for businesses targeting the growing market of internet enabled mobile phone users.

Bango are Silver Sponsors at Mobile Social Media on the 15/16th March at Olympia, London.

(Bango – 03/02/10)

With the intense coverage that mobile applications continue to attract, the content developers are already starting to investigate alternative distribution channels to the App “Stores” themselves. In the rush to follow the now crowded mobile apps market, developers are starting to realise that after all their efforts to build a mobile app, to get noticed and survive they need to look beyond the app store.

Distribution is no longer about being in the top 10 – almost impossible amongst such fierce competition and undocumented selection methods by store managers. It is now about maximizing distribution and revenues. This is precisely what a recent survey by Bango uncovered. Bango surveyed over 400 developers and content providers in the USA and Europe, and the results revealed:

• 45% of developers plan to monetize their apps directly, in other words outside the app store

• 48% think that although app stores will grow in importance in five years time, these channels will coexist alongside the mobile web

• iPhone tops the list, followed by Android and BlackBerry, for the most important handset/platform to develop an app for in 2010

• Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian also listed as an important development platform

This doesn’t come as a surprise, as fragmentation in mobile platforms increases the challenge of reaching a mobile audience. With mobile web browser capabilities continuing to improve many are starting to see the benefits of browser-based distribution, over which they have more control.

However, as a distribution channel, Nokia’s Ovi store lags behind and hardly gets a mention in the list. Despite their many attempts to develop a successful app store, the journey for Nokia to achieve this has been very testing. For consumers, as with many other app stores, the Ovi checkout process can be a frustrating experience. In order to purchase content, you must pre-register details on multiple pages to complete the task and make the payment.

Another absentee from the list is Vodafone’s “360” app store. Vodafone is aiming to attract the attention of its 315million subscribers, but as of the date of writing, there are only a few devices supported – It recently announced that it expects 2m 360-capable handsets by the end of March. As many developers know so well, fragmentation is a major headache and Vodafone – which supports the iPhone store, Google’s Android marketplace, the Ovi store and now its own app channel, will need to determine if yet another app store helps move more developers into the mobile marketplace.

What the Bango survey does show is that developers are already looking beyond the app store, and want to reach their customers directly. This is good news for the long-term prospects of the mobile industry and for the billions of customers who eagerly await the next best app.