Distribution of mobile applications, again 
Yesterday two company's I've never heard of
announced that they have now a system for "Try before Buy" mobile applications.
While that's basically nothing new (I think most of these download portals have this option) the way they do it is very easy for the customer:
- order the download via sms (send some text to some short code number)
- if the trial is over the application will ask for activating the full version by sending an premium sms message
But this is again for the big boys in business. I don't think it's an option for individual developers / mobile shareware authors.
At first someone has to pay the initial WAP push message. Then having a premium sms short code (or even only a keyword) costs some money. And even if your customer's like the product and buy, you only get around 20 percent of the pie. (60% goes off to the network operators and the distributor also want's to earn some money).
If you want to do all that without a distributor it looks like that:
You get 1000 trial downloads. 1% of the downloader's buy your application. (My own conversion rate is much smaller!)
Inbound SMS monthly fee = 10 EUR
1000 x 0,15 EUR for WAP push messages = 150 EUR
= 160 EUR costs
1% of 1000 = 10
10 x 2,99 EUR (cost of the premium sms for the end user) = 29,90 EUR - 70% (for the operator and the payment service) = 8,97
So you get 8,97 EUR - 160 EUR =
-151,03 EURWow. That's bad. So we are left with the usual mobile internet download portals. (No cost for WAP push, payment via more or less cheap credit cards.)
The only problem seems to be that most mobile phone users don't know that these mobile download portals exist and how to use them. (Entering an URL like wap.getyourmobiledownloads.com isn't easy with a mobile phone - that's for sure!)
Hope this will change some day. Maybe a wider use of things like
semacode or QR codes (seems to be popular in Japan) and preinstalled reader applications will change things a bit.
And I'm still hoping to see a real mobile PayPal someday.
