Hey, Developers. Thanks for signing up to join us at Mobile 2.0 2011. If you have not registered already, please email us at info@mobile2event.com and mention that you read this Blog post, and we will send you a special discount code 
We are super pleased that we have a great set of Workshops that should prove to be of value to you. Dont hesitate to make your voices heard! No question is too complicated, no question is too simple. Mobile 2.0 has always been and will always be about you the Audience!
I am also very happy to be able to offer you the Oppportunity to find out how Telefonica/BlueVia Developer program can help you market your Apps in Mexico, Latin America and Europe. I know many of us are pretty sceptical about a Carrier Developer program, just how innovative can they really be? Well, come find out more and decide for yourself at the BlueVia Open House which will be held all day at Mobile 2.0
For more in-depth look at BlueVia, give a read to the recent UK interview with James Parton, the Head of Marketing.
Me, Mobile Entertainment at http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/tag/top-50-mobile-innovators
INTERVIEW: BlueVia’s James Parton on making apps smarter
by Tim Green
Friday, June 24th 2011 at 10:22am
‘We’ve got the network assets. You’ve got the creativity. Let’s make lots of money’.
BlueVia is the Platinum Partner of ME’s Top 50 Mobile Innovators project, which aims to identify the cream of the British mobile content scene. Here, we speak to James Parton about the Telefonica developer initiative…
If there’s any operator project that deserves the moniker ‘smart pipe’, it’s Telefonica’s BlueVia. It’s been pointed out a squillion times before that operators have lots of assets at their disposal – but that they tend not to include developer creativity.
Telefonica implicitly recognised this when it launched BlueVia in beta late last year. BlueVia is all about making life easier – and more lucrative – for developers by inviting them to enhance their apps and services by plugging in network APIs, while also offering risk free revenue share business models.
It’s saying to developers use our network assets to make your apps smarter’.
Smart pipe, see?
Specifically, these APIs enable developers to send and receive SMS/MMS, embed ads, retrieve user and device information, and get the location of the user. But there are more ‘enablers’ to come.
It’s only been out of closed beta for a few weeks, but BlueVia is already accumulating some interesting case studies while preparing to enhance its offering with more APIs.
We caught up with the man behind it all, James Parton.
How many developers are currently signed up for BlueVia?
Over a thousand. We’re pleased with how things are going so far. Especially since we’re only two months out of closed beta. But I’ve really got to stress that it’s not about numbers. We’re a telco, not a developer community, and we’ve realised that the important thing is to make available the right assets to the right developers.
That means going to them, wherever they are, rather than trying to build up yet another closed programme and get them to come to us. It’s why we teamed up with Microsoft to reach out to the .net community, for example.
We’re also building a nice base of case studies – we have around 25 in various stages of development. Really, that’s the best way of communicating what we’re trying to build here. People say to me ‘what applications can I create using BlueVia?’ and really I want to avoid closing people’s creativity down.
I describe BlueVia as providing the ingredients, but developers will come up with the recipe and bake the cake. We’re providing the tools. It’s our developers’ creativity that will provide the inspiration and the way forward. Telco’s track record of launching services proves we are the wrong people to ask what to build!
What’s a good example of a BlueVia enhanced app?
TextDeck is great. It’s very simple – and tool for sending SMS from a Mac. Messages appear on the recipients phone as if sent from your phone, and any replies are sent back to your phone too. The developer gets a rev share on every message, because messages are billed outside of any inclusive monthly messages the customer may have.
We like this one because of the revenue element for the developer, but also because it syncs with your Google contacts and is distributed via the Mac App store. So it’s a good example of a telco service that mashes up with web-based tools.
Another is TaxiStop, which will send an MMS to people waiting for a taxi containing a photo or the driver, the registration number of the driver and the cab license plate. It’s a passenger safety and reassurance thing.
You just closed Litmus, which was the precursor to BlueVia. What should we read into that?
Actually I’m really proud we closed Litmus. Telcos never close anything! But we’d evolved Litmus into BlueVia anyway, so it was part of the whole consolidation process that we shut it to ensure we have a clear strategy around BlueVia. The worst possible situation would be confusing developers with multiple platforms.
How many more APIs could be made available?
We’ve just launched the location API, which is attracting a lot of interest. It’s a breakthrough because it’s free for developers to look up O2 UK customers, and of course it uses the network to pin point, which has some advantages over and app using GPS like reducing the drain the handset battery.
There are five more APIs in the works now, and more countries to be added to the platform. Further ahead, we’ll have more and they will reflect the assets that the network can offer in areas such as roaming, context, subscriber status, location and so on.
One optional piece of the BlueVia offering is distribution through the Telefonica app stores. How significant are these channels?
As I’ve said, we’re not hung up on keeping things exclusive to the Telefonica network. We’re happy for developers to distribute their apps how they want. But, yes, we can offer distribution through our own channels. At the moment we have app stores live in Germany, Argentina and Spain, and we’re working on broadening this out.
However, there are things an operator can do to add value around recommendation and personalisation, for example, because we have access to so much consumer data. And we’re working on ideas like an on-device folder that you can push apps to. That should be pretty interesting.
How viable is BlueVia as a single-operator offering? Surely developers want to enhance their apps with APIs that work across all networks…
Clearly, we’d love to see this go cross network. History shows us that services really take off when this happens. And with the WAC and OneAPI there are initiatives out there. They need to succeed.
Of course there’s cynicism around these ideas. I understand that. Telcos are not agile. They don’t move at internet speed. But they are good at ‘fast following’, and they will quickly copy ideas that work. I hope that we can lead the way on APIs.
The other thing to remember is that Telefonica might be one network, but we can access more than 270 million customers in 25 countries.
If WAC does deliver, is that the end for BlueVia?
There are always going to be differences between different operators in terms of commercial strategy, marketing, and technology, plus regional differences in regulation. Some operators may be content with WAC APIs, but there will be others – like Telefonica – that have a particular focus and will want to make incremental investments into their API and developer offerings.
Ultimately, telcos make billions from core voice and data services. Some would ask, why bother with this stuff at all?
The core business of telcos does come first, of course it does. But telcos have to look to the future and develop new services and revenue streams. Telefonica/O2 has a history of innovation. Industry analysts are independently describing Telefonica as one of the most progressive telcos in the world, and that’s something I’m proud to be a part of.
The important thing about BlueVia is that it sits outside of the local business units, yet returns revenues back to them, so we’ve got support from the whole organisation.
I’ve done ten years inside telco product development and I’ve launched many operator branded services – we all know that those days have gone. Now, it’s all about exposing our unique assets to the creativity of others and all sharing in the rewards.