Ogilvy gives everyone a white christmas this year

Ogilvy develops Christmas app for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and most other camera phones in partnership with Golden Gekko.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”

Like Bing Crosby, but smaller and easier to control, Let It Snow brings you the magic of a white Christmas wherever you are.

Syncing with your iPhone camera, this smart little app works by adding a gently-falling veil of snow to anything you view. Just click the button and look… it’s snowing!

Cheaper than hiring a snow machine and so simple, a reindeer in mittens could do it – Let It Snow transforms your whole world into a festive photo opportunity. (You don’t even need to go outside to enjoy it.)

Chances of a white Christmas this year? 100%.

Click here to download

The application is also available for Android and over 1000 Java phones on http://snow-ogilvy.golgek.mobi from your mobile

Know The Signs Breathalyzer iPhone app from Heineken

Golden Gekko develops iPhone app for Heineken to increase drinking awareness.

We all know someone who sometimes has one too many to drink on a night out. Whether they transform into a Fighter, an Exhibitionist, a Groper, a Flirt, a Sleeper, a Crier or a Stumbler, you can be sure they’re going to cause you problems.

Now if your friend starts to show the signs of turning into one of these characters, you can use the Heineken Breathalyzer before things get out of hand.

All you need to do is pre-set it to one of the seven characters before handing the breathalyzer over to your friend. Ask them to blow into the phone’s microphone and watch their face as they fail dramatically.

Not only will your friend get the message that they’ve had one too many, but they’ll also know what you really think they’re like on a night out!

Click here to download

Most mobile marketing startups hedging their bets by developing apps for multiple platforms

Moconews has an interesting article about the challenges of multi-platform mobile development (iPhone, Android, Java, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc) today.

The trade-off between delivering an amazing user experience to 2-3% of mobile subscribers (e.g. iPhone and Android) or a mass market application for a wide range of devices (50% or more) is a difficult one for everyone. Our general experience is that Java applications delivered across Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and proprietary operating systems get up to 10x as many downloads as an iPhone app but achieving a similar user experience is very time consuming and costly.

The average cost of an advanced iPhone or Android game/app is in the region 25-50k euro depending on complexity whereas as a mass market app/game with 80% phone penetration (across multiple platforms) is about 200.000-400.000 euro when fully optimized across the devices.

So what about automatic porting services then? There are several companies that claim that they can deliver cross-platform porting at costs starting around 10.000-20.000 USD. Our experience however is that the tweaking and optimisation to make the ported application to look and work nicely on the individual platforms make the cost almost as high as doing proprietary development.

More comments on this to follow...

7 Mobile Insights May 2009 including iPhone App and Java download statistics

The past 9 months have been interesting in more ways than Apple achieving 1 billion app downloads from the iPhone appstore:

1. Mobile ad spend in 2008 in the UK exceeded expectations and doubled vs. 2007 (http://tinyurl.com/qengsl)
2. Over 400% growth in apps downloaded 2008 vs 2007 driven by the iPhone Appstore as well as free appstores (Getjar, Mobile9, Mobango, etc), device manufacturer appstores (Blackberry App World, Nokia Ovi, Samsung Mobile Applications, etc) and mobile operators (Vodafone Appstore, O2 Limus, Orange World Appstore, etc)
3. Although iPhone apps get all the attention Golden Gekko has found that when launching apps/games across both iPhone and other platforms the number of downloads on other platforms (Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Blackberry, etc) outnumber iPhone 10 to 1 (contact us for more info).
4. With approx 2% iPhone device penetration Apple Appstore has an impressive 12% (21% including iTouch) market share in volume of mobile apps downloaded in Europe and North America (Strategy Analytics: How Apple Change the Market for Mobile Applications, http://tinyurl.com/o52cm7).
5. Although iPhone app development can cost as little as $12.000 a well-designed app can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, take six to eight weeks to develop, and a couple more weeks more to be approved by Apple (http://tinyurl.com/qke9xb)
6. 52% of mobile users play games on their phone and about one-in-ten mobile phone users in Europe (8%) claim to have participated in mobile marketing efforts (MMA European Mobile Attitude and Usage Study, December 2008)
7. 51 percent of mobile phone users in the USA access content using their mobile phone on a weekly basis (http://tinyurl.com/p95opg)

Universal Pictures launches another iPhone app to promote The Boat that Rocked

Today Universal Pictures launched yet another iPhone application developed by Golden Gekko on behalf of Hyper to promote the movie 'The Boat that Rocked'.

Play the official 'The Boat that Rocked" Top Trumps(tm) game with your iPhone or iPod Touch. Based on the original Top Trumps card game, players must choose a character statistic from their dealt card to then be compared against their opponent's card. The player with the highest statistics wins. Two player mode available without the need for a second iPhone or iPod Touch. One player game available against the computer.

Also included is the official movie trailer and photo images from the film.

You can find the application here or http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=307166412&mt=8

Enjoy!

The Unborn iPhone app nr 8 on iTunes

The Unborn iphone application is now number 8 on iTunes and climbing!

Here are some of the reviews:

5 stars
"Ok you're not likely to keep this on your phone forever but this is a really cool example of how to promote a film. Interesting clips and the call is creepy! Well done!" - Spook73

5 stars
"Great free app! Took a bit of time to find the hidden gems but once I did it was lots of fun and one feature was very spooky. Beats most of the paid for apps. The movie seems fantastic as well. Definitely want to watch the movie straight away!" - Andrew Saggers


4 stars
"I think more films should do this they could have a catorgory 4 it" - Pompey Boo

4 stars
"But cool. I like the call at the end. Only problem, I had an iPod." - The1wholuvsVicky

More to follow...