- English
Categories
- Americas [16]
- APAC [4]
- Business Opportunities/Services [6]
- BusinessSuccess [5]
- China [2]
- Cloud Technology [2]
- CrossPlatform [5]
- EMEA [2]
- Europe [17]
- Files/Data [1]
- Flash Lite [7]
- Games [4]
- GeneralSuccess [19]
- IMEA [6]
- In-App Advertising [1]
- Indonesia [1]
- Java ME [4]
- Localization [1]
- Location [1]
- Location Based Services [2]
- Maemo [1]
- MakingADifference [2]
- Monetization [2]
- NDSuccess [20]
- NDSuccess [1]
- New Symbian [5]
- Nokia Store [5]
- Open Screen Project Fund [2]
- Ovi [2]
- Ovi Store [58]
- Qt [18]
- Qt Mobility [1]
- Qt Quick [2]
- S60 [8]
- Security [1]
- Series 40 [6]
- Series40 [10]
- Singapore [1]
- Symbian [6]
- Symbian C++ [5]
- Symbian Web Runtime [1]
- Themes [6]
- Tools [3]
- Utilities [1]
- Web Apps [1]
- Web Technology [3]
- WindowsPhone [4]
Calendar
Recently...
- 100 million in 100 seconds
- Gaming for the Masses: Inode Entertainment Joins the One Hundred Million Download Club
- After 11 million downloads, Psiloc’s World Traveler moves to Nokia Asha Touch phones
- Tracking Baby’s Steps: ParentAssist, a Windows Phone developer success story
- FourBros Studio Scores Big Bucks with In-App Advertising
- Passion into Profit: Success Stories from DreamGamez and IND190
- Nanyang Polytechnic Students Score High Points with ShakePicPro
- Monster Truck Dash drives UTV Indiagames’ success in Nokia Store
- Twist Mobile sees big payoff in Nokia Store
- CellApp lights the way for millions of Nokia users
A Hit with the Kiddos: Spice Labs Success Story
OviPublisherSuccesses | 28 September, 2011 22:33
In 2009, Spice Labs was founded with a vision to create easy to use, engaging and relevant applications for mobile phones. The company’s app Kiddo won an award at the Nokia N8 Hackathon at Nokia World 2010. As we gear up for Nokia World 2011, we’ll take a look at the app’s – and the company’s – success since that award. Milestones in the Nokia Store include combined downloads of more than 9.6 million for their many applications, including the Hangman app crossing the one million download mark in just a few months.
The Kiddo Experience
The Spice Labs Kiddo app was born from personal experience. Many of the company’s founding members have young children at home, and they’ve all fallen victim to those kids snatching their mobile phones right out of their hands to play games or search for other interesting content. Although the kids had fun playing with their parents’ phones, there was actually very little content designed just for them – something to keep them engaged, educated and safe. Spice Labs – as parents and as developers – stepped in to fill that gap.
One of the early results was Kiddo, an anytime, anywhere digital tutor for mobile phones. The app is designed not only to entertain your kids, but also to familiarize them with educational basics like alphabets and numbers. Kiddo uses vibrant graphics, sounds and music and interactive elements to create an experience young people love; and includes a child lock option for the parents’ peace of mind. Users can even customize the Kiddo experience by adding their own voice to the app.
“As a mobile application developer and mother of a 2-year-old, I consider myself very fortunate to work on projects where I can bring a dual perspective to the table – from the creator and the end-user,” said Arunima Shekhar, project manager at Spice Labs. “I believe in the adage that the best products are made when developers are solving their own problems – necessity drives invention. That’s why it was a no-brainer for me to join the Spice Labs team and work on Kiddo.”
Kiddo is an education tool as much as it is an entertainment experience. Spice Labs focus groups have found that 60% of kids who participated in a learning exercise with Kiddo registered a significant gain in the efficiency and speed of learning, memorization and pronunciation of words. In addition, approximately 10 per cent of the kids studied were able to increase their vocabulary compared to peers not armed with the Kiddo experience.
“The results we have seen are amazing. What started as a way to keep peace at family dinner is now being used as a serious teaching aid,” said Prashant Singh, Spice Labs product manager.
Based on their experience using the graphics, sound, multimedia and touch interface of Nokia mobile phones and smartphones, Spice Labs is now looking to expand their content portfolio for child-friendly apps and casual games.
Developing with Reach
The Spice Labs Kiddo app, which is available globally on Symbian^3, S60 3rd edition, S60 5th edition, and J2Me devices was developed using a mix of Qt and native Symbian programming. The development team was able to exploit the processing power of Nokia phones and their touch-screen capabilities.
“Qt has really been a blessing for our developer team as it has allowed us to keep the majority of our design and development independent of the underlying hardware and platform variations, meaning we freed up development bandwidth and creativity to get our developers back to what they do best – writing awesome apps,” said Prashant Singh.
With just three designers and five developers, Spice Labs was able to develop the first version of the Kiddo app in just two weeks. From there, Nokia helped the company overcome one of their key hurdles: reaching the right set of users.
“Nokia offers a huge reach in terms of geography and demographics. If you can think of a cool app idea, chances are there will be a sizeable potential user base with Nokia. Nokia was a must for us,” continued Singh.
In addition to consumer reach, Spice Labs also took advantage of the vibrant Nokia Symbian developer community and the developer support system at Nokia Developer, which they found to be very proactive and supportive throughout the development cycle. Through local sales unit (LSU) and global spotlights the company also saw huge upticks in downloads – 6-10x increased downloads from an LSU spotlight, and an 8-10x increase in overall downloads from a global spotlight.
“This is the kind of support that’s missing in other platforms,” concluded Singh.
Spice Labs is a 40-person division of S Mobility. Their Kiddo app is available to download for free in the Nokia Store.
Qt
, IMEA
, NDSuccess
, GeneralSuccess
, CrossPlatform
|
Next |
Previous |
Comments (0) |
Trackbacks (0)
Comments
You must login to post comments.
Login
