Who Makes This Stuff - With SplashData

Posted by: PatrickJ on Sep 22 2006

 

"In my mind, PDA’s are a bit like dinosaurs – they’re not going to disappear, they’re just transforming into birds.  Deep inside a Treo smartphone you can still find the DNA of the old Palm Pilot PDA.  The same is true for Windows Mobile and Symbian." - Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData

Ever wondered who’s behind some of those essential, favorite applications you use every day on your Pocket PC or smartphone, and how they’ve made them so popular and successful?

If so, hopefully you will enjoy this series of posts, where we will talk to some of the very best software developers and publishers. In these brief Q&A sessions, we’ll learn a little about how they got started, their views on how the whole mobile applications area is going to develop, and their thoughts on what it takes to make excellent mobile software.

For this latest entry in the series, we’ve talked to Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData - makers of SplashID, SplashPhoto, SplashMoney, SplashShopper, SplashTravel - and developers for ALL the major mobile platforms.

Each of these Q&A sessions has been fun to do, and I have just thoroughly enjoyed seeing the great answers and insight we’ve got back.

Here’s just a few quick reasons why Morgan’s answers are so interesting:

• SplashData develop for and support virtually every platform possible for mobile apps:  "…we’re the only company I know of that has multiple applications on eight different platforms – Windows, Mac OS, Palm OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Nokia S60, Symbian UIQ, and BlackBerry"
• SplashData produces some exciting and everyday essential products - for password management and virtual wallets, handling of photos and graphics, finance and travel, and more.
• And they’re now seeing major growth in selling into enterprises - one quarter of SplashID sales now come from business deployments

Read on for Morgan’s great Q&A session with us …

 

Company Profile:

Location: Los Gatos, CA (Silicon Valley)

Founded: 2000

Number of Staff: 15, mostly development

CEO / Principals: Morgan Slain

Flagship Products: SplashID Password Manager, SplashPhoto, SplashMoney, SplashShopper, SplashTravel

Platforms: Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian S60, UIQ, BlackBerry

Numbers of Products Sold / Trial Downloads: Over 1 million downloads - Over 500,000 sales

Questions:

Q: Can you tell us a little about how the company got started?  Was there a particular gap you saw, an application you wanted and nobody made or did right?

When we started up back in 2000, we saw a number of terrific games and calendaring applications available for handhelds, but not a lot of great productivity applications.  That’s been our focus ever since.  

Q: Give us the ‘Elevator Pitch’ on SplashData – what’s the corporate philosophy that drives your product development. 

We want to be the leaders in productivity software for smartphones.  We want to make the kinds of applications that are so useful, they form the basis of your virtual wallet.

Q: SplashData’s range of mobile platforms supported is very impressive – Palm, Windows Mobile, more than one Symbian flavor, PC and Mac support, and (recently I think) support for Blackberry also. How challenging is this for you – in terms of development teams, and even providing support for all your apps across all those platforms?

It’s incredibly challenging — we’re the only company I know of that has multiple applications on eight different platforms – Windows, Mac OS, Palm OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Nokia S60, Symbian UIQ, and BlackBerry.  Why do we do it?  It’s an important differentiator for us.  It shows we want to support our customers no matter what devices they use. 

Q: What makes a GREAT mobile application?  What are the key factors in making a really successful and effective application for mobile devices?  Are the answers the same across all platforms, or are there different thoughts on what makes a great Palm app vs. a great Windows Mobile app vs. a great Symbian app?

What we find paramount are ease of use and unambiguous functionality so that we help our users overcome the limitations of handheld screen sizes and input mechanisms.  We’re even willing to sacrifice some bells and whistles in terms of pretty colors and whiz-bang graphics to make sure our apps are intuitive and get the job done for you.  This focus becomes even more important on platforms like Windows Mobile Smartphone or BlackBerry that don’t have touch screens.

Q: SplashData has been a leading publisher of Palm apps for quite a while. What are your thoughts on where the Palm OS is going, and on the new ALP Linux-based version of the OS?  Are you already developing for the new ALP version of the OS?

We’re big believers in Palm and Treo devices no matter what OS they run on.  We’re happy to support Windows Mobile-based Treos now, and we’ll support Linux-based devices in the future.  That said, traditional Palm OS continues to be our strongest platform in terms of sales, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Q: In its current version, Palm doesn’t support multi-tasking – is multi-tasking overrated on mobile devices?

I think you raise a valid point.  There isn’t a lot that a typical Palm or Treo user can’t get done with their device today because the OS doesn’t multi-task.  It’s just not something we hear a lot of our customers complaining about or even mentioning.

Q: Your web-site has some good information on Enterprise and Government editions of SplashID.  How big an area is this for you?  This seems to me to be an area with huge potential as enterprises begin to view mobile devices in a similar way to laptops.  It feels like they probably need a lot more help and ‘push’ from some of the leading mobile apps vendors.  Is this expected to be a growth area for you?

Absolutely — about one-quarter of our SplashID sales now come from business deployments.  That includes major clients like Los Alamos, NetBank, and Getty as well as sales of our 5-pack and 10-pack licenses to smaller organizations.  These kinds of sales of SplashID are indeed our strongest area of growth.

Q: What are some of the challenges of working with enterprise deployments?  How do you handle support for this area?

Sales to larger companies definitely require a lot of lead time and cycles as you go through phases of analysis, testing, and procurement.  We do offer a higher level of customization and support for these customers with dedicated personnel.

Q: SplashID is a long-standing leader on Palm and Windows Mobile devices, in a very competitive software category. What makes it so successful? How do you keep pace with the competition?

SplashID has proven functionality, reliability, and security for managing logins and passwords as well as other kinds of confidential data like credit cards, bank accounts, insurance information, software registration keys, and more.  Our synchronization with desktops is second to none.  I also think there is a network effect – if I have SplashID, I want my family members and colleagues to use it as well so that we can share records easily and securely.

Q: I’ve read a few pieces recently on smartphones and mobile applications, and the lack of takeup of applications by ‘normal’ users (i.e. not geeks). There’s a great piece by Michael Mace at Mobile Opportunity on the need for a new mobile platform, because ‘sophisticated mobile data apps’ just don’t sell well. (see it at: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/). It seems that a huge percentage of users just don’t know about a lot of the great software that is out there, and don’t know all the powerful things they can do with their mobile device (beyond just phone and email). What are your thoughts on the state of mobile apps sales and how to grow awareness and sales to more of the ‘entry-level’ users out there?

I had lunch with Michael Mace a few weeks before he published that piece, and he previewed some of those viewpoints with me.  Our perspective is a bit different since SplashData is actually seeing significant sales growth.  We’re incredibly excited to be in the smartphone software space, and we’re pleased about the way it’s developing.  Of course, we may have some advantages like a very popular website at www.splashdata.com that generates most of our sales.  But we believe smartphone software is going to be a big market for many companies, not just ours.

Q: Are there Product Roadmaps that you work to for your stable of products – i.e. should we expect a major new version release every 12-18 months, a .x release once per year?  What’s the approach in this area?

In the past, we launched new versions whenever we had enough new features to warrant it.  I would like to move toward more consistent, predictable rollouts in which a major new version for each of our core apps could be expected every year or so.

Q: How do your products do in the ‘converged devices’ area as opposed to non-connected PDAs – do you have numbers or a feel for what percentage of your userbase is ‘straight’ PDAs, as opposed to converged devices?

We’re seeing the same trends that the market as a whole is seeing — a majority of our customers now own smartphones.  In my mind, PDA’s are a bit like dinosaurs – they’re not going to disappear, they’re just transforming into birds.  Deep inside a Treo smartphone you can still find the DNA of the old Palm Pilot PDA.  The same is true for Windows Mobile and Symbian.

Q: Do you see a bright future for all of the mobile OS platforms you support?  What are some of the OS or mobile hardware innovations you are looking forward to on the various platforms that will allow you to produce more powerful and effective programs?

We do believe in all the major smartphone platforms, although we are seeing the fastest growth from Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.  I personally am really excited to see GPS come to smartphones – there are some really cool location based services that we can add to applications like SplashTravel.

Q: The Smartphone and Pocket PC awards for 2006 will come out later this year.  I always find that a superb jumping-off point for finding great software in lots of categories.  So … any of your products we should placing a wager on as a potential 2006 winner?

You bet!  SplashID and SplashPhoto are both nominated this year.  SplashID and SplashTravel were also both nominated for Handango Champion awards last week, and SplashID won as Best New BlackBerry Application.

Q: Which other software publishers do you rate highly?  Who else should be getting some of those awards this year?

On the productivity side, I’m a big fan of Iambic and Agendus.  For games, I’ve been impressed with Real Dice over the past year.

Q: What can we look forward to from SplashData in the rest of 2006, and into 2007?  New versions?  Any brand new products coming? 

Well, I can tell you that we will be looking to complete our full SplashWallet suite for all major smartphone platforms, so look for more Windows Mobile and BlackBerry releases.  We will also be releasing new versions of some of our existing core applications, including our best-selling SplashID for Palm OS.  So we will have a lot of news over the next six months or so!

[tags]SplashData,SplashID,SplashWallet,SplashPhoto,SplashTravel,SplashShopper,SplashMoney[/tags] 

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