One of our users scanned an item in a West Anaheim Kmart and determined that it was $30 cheaper on Kmart’s own website. He talked to Carlos, the manager on duty, who indicated they they would do not match online prices. Our user, as a dedicated ShopSavvy user, brought this to our attention and I decided to get to the bottom of the problem.
I called the store and talked to Tammy, the manager on duty, and she explained that Kmart and Kmart.com are actually separate businesses - they do not share a P&L and they have no control over one another’s prices. Wow, I did not know that (I think Kmart closed down in Texas so I didn’t even realize they were still in business). She also explained that Kmart.com charges VERY high shipping costs that often make an instore purchase equal in cost. Tammy is not a fan of Kmart.com - it makes her life hard (i.e. having to listen to customers complain).
Tammy concluded that Kmart does not match prices whatsoever. Good to know. Having problems with retailers and pricing? Email sales@biggu.com and we will get to the bottom of your problems!
Scott Ryan and Jason Hudgins will be heading to the Crunchies in San Francisco to pick up our Crunchie (assuming Mike used refurb voting machines from the 2000 Florida presidential election). In all seriousness, Mike and his team at TechCrunch have been a great asset to the community over the years and it makes sense to pay them back by showing up despite the fact that ShopSavvy is the longest shot in the history of longshots (I encourage everyone to show up if possible). You can still vote: http://tinyurl.com/savvyvote
While Scott and Jason are getting to San Francisco I will be boarding a plane, headed home from AndroidDevCamp Amsterdam where I will be giving the keynote (note to self: prepare something!).
Meanwhile, Ryan will be spending ALL week coding (24/7) getting ShopSavvy ready for our EU launch - we will be live in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic and Austria. Hopefully, ShopSavvy will be ‘Big in Europe’ - Jonas honored us with another Godzilla poster/t-shirt design for our EU launch (what do you think?):
Take one last minute to vote for ShopSavvy to win Best Mobile App of 2008. http://tinyurl.com/savvyvote.
Could 2009 be Android’s year? If Alex is right it just might be. Here is a repost of his thoughts from his post titled, “Louis Gray Predicts 9,000,000 Android Phones in 2009!”
Louis Gray posted his “10 Predictions for 2009 in the World of Tech“. His fifth prediction is that Android will have less than 20% of iPhone sales in 2009. Assuming this is true, that could mean as many as 9,000,000 people will adopt a phone that uses the Android operating system like T-Mobile’s G1. This is amazing. The iPhone sold 9,300,000 units in its first full year, if Louis is correct I think you would have to call Android a hit!
I have been preparing my keynote presentation for AndroidDevCamp in Amsterdam next week and have been compiling some statistics (all based on published, non-NDA related information). I think they are instructive:
- G1 has outsold iPhone (in same time period)
This is especially amazing if you consider that AT&T has 65.7 million U.S. users compared with T-Mobile’s 25 million U.S. users. Android has a three-to-one advantage in penetration:
- G1 has 3-1 better penetration rate than iPhone (in same period)
The more interesting statistic is that T-Mobile has more than 100 million users in the EU (that is more than T-Mobile and AT&T combined in the US). What do you think this will mean for Android adoption when T-Mobile unleashes the G1 in Europe? The sale price of the G1 and the iPhone were roughly the same in the US - $179 versus $199 or so - no real advantage either way. In Europe, where their is no history of carriers subsidizing the cost of handsets, T-Mobile has announced that the handset will be free with a two or three year contract. Here are my thoughts for EU penetration in Q1 2009 (based on US iPhone 1.5% penetration and US G1 4% penetration):
- G1 is poised for a blow out year in 2009
While Louis might be right, I have a feeling first year adoption of Android may be even higher than the iPhone’s first year adoption. Why? Very simple, Android has a first year market size of 125,000,000 users (T-Mobile) while Apple’s first year market size was only 67,500,000 users (AT&T). Additionally, T-Mobile customers seem to be more likely to switch from their dated feature phone to the new G1 as evidenced by their higher penetration numbers. Add on the fact that T-Mobile is going to subsidize the phone in a MUCH bigger market I have a feeling Android might explode in 2009. “iPhone, meet train…” (of course NONE of these numbers are worth repeating - they are almost all conjecture based on third-party reports - but they seem to be ‘relative’ and thus worth thinking about)
Nokia, in a response to the iPhone and the impending launch of Android, decided to create the Symbian Foundation to “provide, manage and unify the platform, ultimately releasing it as open source.” Symbian is one of the most widely used operating system for feature phones (60% of the market). Sounds smart? I thought so too.
The only problem is that Nokia doesn’t ‘get it’. The Symbian source will be ‘open’ only to members of the ‘club’ until 2011. Members must pay yearly dues of $1,500. Of course this is no big deal for AT&T, LG, Motorola or NTT - it is a big deal for kids like Jeffrey Grossman, a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon who created Movies.app and sold it to Flixster. $1,500 might just be enough to scare Jeffrey away. Young, passionate developers are what makes the iPhone and G1 interesting.
Google figured out VERY quickly that it would be a good idea to come up with a way to PAY developers for creating applications on Android - $10MM for developers in the ADC I&II. How many apps would have been ready for the G1 launch if Google had required developers to pay $1,500 to access their SDK?
If I was Apple or Google I wouldn’t spend much time worrying about Symbian - developers shouldn’t bother either…
I am pleased to announce ShopSavvy, our mobile barcode scanning application, was nominated for a 2008 Crunchie in the ‘Best Mobile App’ category. Thanks to everyone who nominated us. The winner for each category will also be chosen by reader voting. Please vote for ShopSavvy. Voting ends on January 5, 2009 at Midnight PST. You may vote up to once per day.
The 2008 Crunchies is the second annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. The Crunchies are co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch. Best of all, the internet community is invited to choose who wins.
The Mothra upgrade (3.1.0) was fairly exciting, but not in a good way. The good news is that our updating system works very well. Within 5 hours of release 25% of our users had upgraded from 3.0.4 to 3.1.0. The bad news is that we quickly realized that there was a strange bug in 3.1.0 and released 3.1.1 and subsequently 3.1.2 the next morning (sorry about that).
The day after we released 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 only 6% of our users were still using the problematic 3.1.0 version and by the next day only 1.3% were still using 3.1.0. If we keep getting traffic from 3.1.0 users we can assume the bug didn’t affect their installs (i.e. we think it only affected 10% of users anyway). As I mentioned before, the good news is that our updating mechanism on ShopSavvy is effective. One of the biggest challenges for remote, native applications - like web browsers is updating (Microsoft still wishes people would finally upgrade past IE 5).
Of course, the data generated by our application is one thing, actual communication from our users is another thing. Almost immediately after the update we began getting emails explaining we had broken user’s phones - that ShopSavvy no longer worked. Some users feedback:
We received complaints from around 30 unique users, which isn’t many when you consider our user base consisting of tens of thousands of people. But let me tell you, it seemed like the sky was falling. I was freaking out. Here is the scoop: Fifteen of these users were running 3.1.1 when they complained (one was running our 3.0.4 beta). Updating their application resolved their issues. Their main issues revolved around a black screen after scanning an item resulting in a freeze of the application. The good news is that we haven’t received a single email complaint from a 3.1.2 user - seems like it is stable and hopefully bug-lite. There is one user who had an issue upgrading from 3.0.4 to 3.1.2, but we think this might have something to do with the camera driver optimizations we had in the beta and removed in 3.1.1. We will continue to keep an eye on this issue.
The results: 10% of our users experienced a problem with 3.1.0, but within a day 99% of our users were no longer experiencing any issues. 3.1.2 seems like a big improvement over 3.0.4’s wish list and memory bug reports. Let us know what you think…
Of course this hack is not for the faint of heart. More here.
You enjoy using ShopSavvy so much you were thinking to yourself, “I wonder if I could invest in this company?” The short answer is ‘no, you can’t’. The long answer is that we already raised $700,000 from Architel and won around $300,000 from Google (read more about that here) in 2008. With only four employees we have a LONG runway before we run out of capital. Our current plan is to stay small and nimble until it makes sense to raise additional capital. When will it make sense? When one of two things occurs: a) the opportunity to raise capital at an attractive valuation presents itself or b) the lack of additional capital begins to hinder our ability to compete in the mobile marketplace. That being said, if you are interested in investing in the company feel free to contact Alexander Muse (email is best amuse@biggu.com).
Rumor has it everyone who bought a G1 will be receiving a new battery - 20% longer life! Nice. Also, Michael Martin shared this G1 flash demo worth reposting here:
ShopSavvy Coverage -
