FOWAB #6 – Monetizing Advertising Mobile Era and Introducing Blaast Platform

Regular event Forum Web Anak Bandung (Bandung Web Forum) for the 6^th time was held collaborating with SparxUp presenting “Monetizing Advertising Mobile Era”. The event was attended by more or less 90 people from various field, with 2 main speakers Leonard Agustinus – Account Manager Indonesia, Mobile Advertising Google and Edo Pamungkas – Mobile Platform Manager, Merah Putih Incubator and one guest speaker Andri Yadi – Movreak App, Winner of SparxUp 2010 (Best of Mobile Category).

Each speakers talked about the opportunity from developing application for mobile devices, various way in monetizing like paid apps, ad based, application as project or freemium, and which platform/handset to develop such as iOS, BlackBerry, Android up to Nokia and feature phone with high number of users in Indonesia. They also informed about application segments with bright future like social, game, themes.

10 by 10 session, one of FOWAB’s special segment present two presentations. The first one was from Ivan Laksana of Pressarian. Ivan explained that Pressarian is a service to simplify developing native app in various platforms. The second one was from Yohan Totting presenting Blaast.

Blaast’s presentation really got my attention. The mobile platform, from Helsinki, is starting to get developers attention. Although they are 'playing quiet', their ambassadors have promoted their service to developers in several cities like Jogja, Jakarta, and Bandung. They are targeting Indonesia as their main market.

I don’t know much about this platform yet other than that it is cloud based mobile platform targeting feature phone as main device other than Android. They will complement their service with apps store, kind of building new ecosystem for the most used device in Indonesia, feature phone and Android which getting more and more popular. You can see video below for more details.

Blaast is approaching developers to create ecosystem, one of the ways is by having competition with interesting prizes to attract mobile developers to take part in developing application based on their SDK, which is now still in beta version and requires invitation to join.

Below is explanation from Yohan Totting, one of Blaast’s ambassadors in Bandung: