QuickOffice on 100m+ phones: "That's what you call reach, Mr iPhone Developer"

There’s quite a lot of discussion going on at the newsletter post I published today.

It always gets exciting when The Blandford gets involved (that is, Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian). Responding to a query about successful Symbian downloads, Rafe pointed out that Quickoffice is on over 100 million Symbian phones. Including the 3 Symbian devices on my desk, here.

Rafe makes an interesting point for developers: Don’t forget the embed option.

There are a few developers I know right now who are currently doing embed deals with handset manufacturers (that is, getting their application pre-installed on the handsets). It’s not an easy process, but it can make you wildly, wildly successful.

For instance, one developer I know is going to go from maybe a few thousand downloads to 15 million installs, guaranteed, by this time next year. They’re integrating directly into the menu structure.

It’s not as simple as signing up to the iPhone dev programme and paying the $100 fee, but if you’ve got a particularly interesting, unique and relevant app, it’s definitely worth a chat with the manufacturers. You’ll also want some kind of revenue stream attached to it as you typically won’t have manufacturers paying you a lot (or indeed, any) money for an embed deal.

This said, don’t forget the embed option… !