Push Opportunity: The Tour de France
A huge opportunity for mobile push technology is in professional sports - there are few other topics where real-time updates mean so much to so many. After I bought my first Android phone last November, I searched for apps that could provide real-time coverage of the Winter Olympics: there weren't any. The few apps in the Android Market that promised coverage of the Games were disappointing. They either used battery- and bandwidth-hogging polling techniques (we're looking at you, SportsTap!), or just encapsulated browser-based data with no notifications. Not long after, Deacon got its start during the run-up to the NHL playoffs. March Madness came and went, as did the Boston Marathon, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, and (in a few days) the 2010 World Cup.
Tomorrow, the 2010 Tour de France will kick off in Rotterdam - and the Android Market remains disappointingly devoid of apps that can push real-time updates to eager fans. While the Tour does offer an official iPhone app, they're missing out on a substantial customer group - one that represents possibly the fastest-growing smartphone platform with a 160,000 handset-a-day activation rate. Third-party app developers are missing a significant opportunity too - with no "official" app in contention, independent developers' chances of offering the must-have app for following the Tour are much greater.
This is a call to Android developers that goes beyond Deacon: The Android ecosystem needs push apps! So far, the vast majority of Android handsets don't run Froyo - and while Cloud-to-Device Messaging from Google isn't a long way off, the opportunity to deliver push-based apps now using Deacon, Xtify, Urban Airship or whatever framework you choose is ripe for the picking!
(Image: Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
