Mark Jacobstein: Out of the Loopt, into CRV | Hacker News Reader

Mark Jacobstein: Out of the Loopt, into CRV

venturebeat.com

15 pointsdaveb6 comments

I wonder how the Loopt guys are feeling about this.

It just occured to me that in the corporate world, employees have to worry about losing their jobs. Conversely, in the startup world, founders have to worry about losing their employees (especially if PG's thesis from his latest essay is true).

All of these articles keep saying that Loopt is available on Sprint... I can search for it on my Samsung A900 and it comes up "Loopt - Free through 2007!!!" but when I try and load the application I get "Error We're sorry, this item is unavailable"

Am I the only Sprint user that can't get Loopt or is it unavailable for everyone?

Edit: Just tried to sign up at the Loopt website and got "We're sorry but Loopt is not yet supported on your phone model." Seems odd, the only Samsung phone they support is the A920.

Ah, the wonderful world of mobile apps. The way I see it, a company like Loopt needs to do some or all of these feats:

- get someone to buy a handset to support an app they've never used (because it's not on their current phone)

- develop for a handset that is very popular but is going to be removed from the carrier's lineup in a few months, most likely in favor of an incompatible model

- predict which kinds of phone potential customers (by age, metro area and income) will have 3-6 months from now

- deal with the wildly varying capabilities and interfaces of different handsets

- target the market of people who are technologically-savvy yet do not have a Blackberry (because BBs have their own thing going on) or an iPhone

Yeesh, I'm amazed that anyone has the stomach to develop for this market.

PS: Then there's the network effect, of course -- people you want to communicate with should also have supported phones.

In general I would say Loopt is doing just about the best they possibly can given whats currently available. Last I heard Loopt's software was written in Java ME, which means they are using a GPS optional library (probably the Location API, or maybe OpenLAPI). Devices that support this are still few and far between. But they are on the rise. As long as a new device supports the required optional libraries, supporting it is not difficult (there are still usually quirks that need to be sorted out however, often requiring separate builds for each device even though its JavaME).

It may take a stomach to do this kind of stuff, but that is the cost of being on the bleeding edge.

I figured I was safe with getting apps developed for my phone first because the Gmail application used my phone as the reference platform. I guess not.

I'd guess you're in the "popular but about to be discontinued" column then. Carriers keep introducing new phones without much regard for how great the old ones are, because they need to get people to re-up by offering them new hardware that's somehow more capable. Maybe you can get Loopt on it, for example.

And besides, it's basically untenable to develop for a platform that will no longer available at retail by the time that version is ready. There could be half a million handsets out there, but can you imagine press that says "it's available for seven phones, three of which are no longer sold"? Ouch.

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