Rodolfo Forster during his presentation of the Nokia Lumia 800 with Windows Phone 7

Today I had the opportunity of attending the launch of Nokia’s Lumia 800 with Windows Phone 7.  This phone is available for the first time in Puerto Rico through Claro, arguably the most advanced and forward-thinking mobile operator in Puerto Rico.

I had the chance to get together with some good friends from the industry like Rodolfo Forster (Nokia), Vivek Shah (Nokia), Alejandro Mercado (Microsoft) and Yamille Morales (Microsoft).  It is always good to catch-up on projects and strategies, and in a way, constantly validate our roadmap.

I am an Android user, however, the Windows Phone not only feels very solid and polished, but also adds a completely different navigation paradigm to the mix.  I have to admit, that while using a Windows Phone for the first time, it makes an Android or iOS user feel a little bit uncomfortable, primarily because the user experience is not what one would expect.  You look for icons, menus, dock bars, notification bars…it’s all different on this phone.  This is one of the key differentiators between native and web apps, and I think this very fact will help people understand how important user experience is.

The differences between platforms are part of a well orchestrated strategy towards increasing adoption.  You can create a Web App, open it with the iOS or Android browser, and since both platforms are similar in may ways, you wouldn’t feel too uncomfortable.  Now, open that very same Web App on the Windows Phone browser, and you’ll probably say “hey, what’s going on here!?”.  There are many differences in animations, screen transitions, fonts, buttons and other, that today’s Web Apps don’t take into consideration.

The company behind an operating system, wants apps to be developed for their platform, because apps are their currency.  The amount of Apps on every market increases the value of the platform, and creates value to the end user.  Users want to be on a platform with as many useful apps as possible!

We, as technology providers, and our customers as content publishers, must always remember that we cannot choose for our customers, but make it so that what the user wants is readily available on whichever platform they decide to use today, or better yet, be natively available on any platform they choose.

Ricardo Alcocer - Co-founder and CTO

After a few hours and different ideas, we thought that it would be really helpful if all independent dealers have access to the complete Samsung catalog, along with all the official sales guides, everything off-line, ready when they need it.  However, the Caribbean is a special market, where not all phone models are available in all territories and carriers.  Besides, although Spanish is spoken in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, the rest of the Caribbean Islands speak English, French, Dutch, and even some dialects.  This meant that what we offer will have to be available at least in Spanish and English, but at the same time be easy enough to maintain.

TaínoApp is a perfect fit for this scenario.  We installed a WordPress instance and configured two top-level categories for each language.  Inside each of these categories, we placed the different categories for each phone type, in Spanish and English.  All sales guides are added to WordPress as Galleries, associated using custom fields.  We also cleverly used some other WordPress features such as post tags to reuse information across different markets and operators.

The whole project was started as an experiment (code named GalaxySmart) to be used by Claro in Puerto Rico, and was launched at their yearly convention in Puerto Rico.  Samsung had made t-shirts with a huge QR-Code that pointed to the download of the App, and had people walking around wearing them.

This campaign was a huge success, and today, Samsung pushes all sales guides from their Miami office, making them immediately available to sales agents in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobaggo, for mobile operators like Claro, Orange, BMobile, Lime and Digicel, and every time a new phone model is made available to a particular market, sales agents already have all the necessary information to properly answer the questions a customer may have.

“TainoApp helped us go to market quickly and efficiently with the sales content for all of our mobile service personnel and partners across the Caribbean. Additionally, it gave us the added flexibility of updating our information seamlessly, always keeping our customers up to date with the latest in Samsung innovation and their GalaxySmart. What started as an experiment in one market, thanks to TainoApp, has expanded throughout the Caribbean, having set the bar for all of Latin América.”

- Gerardo Molina, Senior Manager for Claro Caribbean at Samsung Electronics

We are honored for the opportunity of being part of this project and its continued success.

Ricardo Alcocer - Co-Founder and Head of Architecture

We’ve been working behind the scenes with our customers for about 4 months now. Our landing page served us well as a lead generation tool for our customer development, but now it’s time to bid it farewell. Let’s pause a moment for the bits that have been laid to rest this day…one…two…that’s long enough!

At TainoApp, we’ve learned that our customers care about getting their content out to as many of their fans and customers as possible. They’ve experienced first hand just how long, frustrating, and expensive the process can be to create their own tools and applications to reach that goal. They’ve also experienced the thrill of having their very own native mobile application beautifully display the content they’ve worked so hard to create. Now the world can too.

Starting today, we’re open to engaging more of you at a faster pace, as we continue our journey to discover the future of content distribution and engagement with the TainoApp platform, and share with you how TainoApp can help you profit from this new model. You are all essential and welcome companions on this journey. No longer do you need to suffer endless meetings with designers and developers to liberate your content; or watch crappy attempts at displaying your content on slow and boring HTML5 web apps. Ever see a push notification come from those lame web apps? Your readers haven’t either! We believe being a native rocks (Go Giants!!), and our customers agree – native user experiences are seamless and beautiful and have a higher conversion on sales and sharing of content with friends and foes alike.

If you’re just hearing about TainoApp, welcome! We’d love to talk to you right now! (Click on the orange thingy to the left!)

We have a lot of unknowns ahead of us. This blog will serve as a way for us to share with you everything we learn along the way. Thank you for your support! Oh, and HTML5 apps suck!

–Ramphis Castro, Co-Founder – TainoApp