Alex Kerr phonepublish.org

1. Reaching The Masses - On “Non-Smart” Phones Alex Kerr phonepublish.org

2. Who Do You Want To Reach? • e.g. - • - country? • - demographic? • - a question for each church and ministry But ultimately we (the church) want to reach everyone(keep in mind!) And How Can You Reach Them? (Assumption: already considered or used missionaries and printed publications) What “information receiving devices/channels” do they have? Radio? TV? PC? Internet? Phone? Smartphone?

3. What Phones Do People ActuallyHave? Media & developer (& thus understandably often corporate/organisation) perception: & maybe: iPhone Windows Phone Android Blackberry Ministry/Outreach on Smartphones: Great! – powerful phones, wonderful user experiences, leads the way in what’s possible. Users: about 264 million total (Apple iOS + Google Android).1 Actual reality: % of phones (% of population) * As % of all phones. Growth in numbers is 36% and 19%. 1. iOSand Android International Installed Base Expansion http://blog.flurry.com/bid/79595/Kaboom-iOS-and-Android-International-Installed-Base-Expansion

4. Subdividing smartphones (end-2010) Emerging /Dev. World Percentages above are end-of-2010 data. But using latest end-of-2011 data, (N) indicates the software platform was the leader in new sales, and (I) the leader in installed base (current users) in that region Pulling out example stats… 1.) The smartphone platform leader by far in the developing world is Nokia’s Symbian, for installed base, and (in all but Lat. Am.) new sales in 2011, despite Nokia’s Windows Phone intentions. (Symbian also runs the featurephone software platform, “Java”) 2.) Taking the two most talked-about phone platforms, iPhone + Android together are owned by roughly 0.5% of the developing world, so… Roughly 99.5% of people in the developing world (~5.4 billion) can not be reached with iPhone + Android!

5. Hang on, everyone’s buying smartphones these days, - so this is all going to change rapidly, right?... % of phones in use which are smartphones Regional current figures and forecast… Cisco (world’s largest computer networking co) report end 2011 (source: Cisco VNI Mobile)

6. So, most phone users in the world won’t have the popular smartphone brands for a long time or ever … situation bleak? No! … just requires a mindset shift / change of perspective “Non-smart”-phone? • Actually far more than just a “phone”, “featurephone” or “dumbphone” • Can often do pretty much everything a smartphone can do, but to a lesser spec. • Even many older phones still in use can run software applications, and • even with lesser capabilities are still perfectly viable targets for ministry ...The potential is HUGE, and exciting

7. How To Reach The Masses On “Low End” Phones? • SMS – Just a short text string. How? Sent via Telco SMS provider, or • Frontline SMS type system (just PC/laptop & a phone). • Phone Call – e.g. Interactive Voice Response. Interact by phone keypad, or voice commands. How? Various IVR providers online. • (Mobile) Web Page – easy to make but user requires continuous internet connection. User experience good enough for lots of things. How? Write a XHTML-Basic web page, put it on your website. • Audio/Visual file – easy to play back on many phones if file format carefully chosen. Easy for users to spread, via Bluetooth wireless. Suits those who primarily communicate orally rather than via writing. No interactivity. Variable quality depending on phone capability. • Flashlite– medium level of interactivity (more than audio/visual, less than app). Need Adobe Flash skills! Uncertain future? • Software app (Java Mobile) – best user experience and functionality, internet only required at installation if at all. How? Learn the Java Mobile language and understand the multiple caveats of the platform!! Or… ??? All phones Some phones (roughly 1 billion in dev. world?) Potentially ~3 billion+ phones? 1 billion+ ? (how many non-smart tho?) Potentially ~3 billion+ phones?

8. Apps on low-end phones (in Java) … a real prize, if you can overcome the pitfalls! • Not just reach those potential 3 billion or so low end phones • Also reach the ~300 million Nokia Symbian smartphones as-is • Also, with minor conversion can reach most, if not all, Blackberries and Androids • But… • Mobile Java is technically complex, increasingly (very) challenging as you try and cater for older andless powerful phones (fragmentation, bugs, lack of memory and power). Significantly more challenging than developing apps for e.g. Android or iPhone. • An official user interface add-on (software library) called LWUIT enables great user experiences (almost smartphone-like) but requires a relatively powerful (/newer) low-end phone, that leave out many older or less powerful phones -> so people missed out! Do you have to make your own Java app (or get one made) ? Alternatives… • Bible? E.g. can use GoBible Creator • Simple eBook? Publish in EPUB format, users can use an Ebook reader. • Advantages: Simple to publish, various free and paid ebook readers • Disadvantages: Biggest is phone capability (memory requirements) usually quite demanding so lots of older or lower powered phones left out -> so people missed out! • Inflexible – limited to Ebook capabilities. • Data format for publications is relatively inefficient (XML based). • Other publishing solutions…?

9. Another solution… PhonePublish(.org) • Takes your Christian pamphlet, guide, course manual, Bible, audiovisual clip, and makes it available as a software app for featurephones, and optionally as a mobile website • #1 priority was making it able to run on literally as many • phones as possible. Much work has gone into making it very efficient! App (without data) is • currently only 17 Kb in size (vs. e.g. 600 Kb for Ebook reader, >732 Kb for LWUIT apps). Important • because some older phones can only run max. 62 Kb apps (or less!). And have only 96 X 65 pixel • screens! But should someone with a phone this limited be denied your Christian content…? • Free – to content owners, and users. • Rich text – text styles, pictures, bullets, tables, box-outs, etc… • Notes - Users can enter and store notes tied to each page in a publication • Feature requests - Happy to discuss what content owners (or their users) may need • Coming soon(ish): audio and video playback (including interactivity, e.g. fully audio IVR-style publications); multiple users on one phone each with their own notes (and settings), multiple publications on one phone (personal library), richer text, “secret believer” sensitive, full touchscreen support, Android and Blackberry versions (already works on Nokia Symbian), iPhone via auto-generated mobile website, feedback forms etc., plug into your website. • PhonePublish is a “delivery mechanism”, like a printing press. Not about just giving all your content away unless you want that!

10. PhonePublish(.org) • Unique features, currently in R & D: • Bluetooth copying of the entire app and/or content – not officially possible with Java apps, but has been demonstrated by 2 or 3 experimenters (+Nokia for 1 app). Would solve the problem of needing internet access – whole app (and your content) could spread virally and indefinitely with zero need for internet on the phone, or even any phone signal. • Cracking the language problem – currently apps can only use the languages built into a phone. On featurephones this is usually one or two, or very few, and no minority languages. After 2 or 3 months research, looks like I have a feasible solution. Would make the dream of “any language on any phone” possible – assuming there’s a digital font available that allows rendering on a PC. • Brainstorming about tracking Bluetooth copies – very very early days but looks like something might possibly be possible! • About to be piloted by the Alpha Course, DS Media (Door43), talking to a variety of other organisations large and small…

11. PhonePublish.org Email: info@phonepublish.org This presentation available now at phonepublish.org – free to copy and distribute