02 February 2010

MEF Executive Questionnaire #1: Vincent Hoogsteder, Distimo

MEF continues to seek new ways to profile its members and promote the thought-leadership of the senior executives within these companies. We are pleased to launch the MEF Executive Questionnaire to reveal the real people behind the industry in an informal and entertaining manner.

This will be a regular feature of the MEF blog, so make sure you subscribe via email or RSS. If you are a senior executive from one of our member companies and would like to be featured then please contact MEF Marketing Director, Stephen Jenkins.

The first in the series is from Vincent Hoogsteder, Co-Founder and CEO of Distimo, the app store analytics company.


1. Please describe briefly your main company activities and your role within that organisation
Distimo provides in-depth reports for companies interested in the mobile application ecosystem, providing valuable insight into important trends happening within application stores. My role within Distimo is co-founder and CEO.

2. Without necessarily revealing any confidential information, please outline the principal business models your company uses
Our clients are handset manufacturers and carriers worldwide, which we deliver custom reports on the app store market on a subscription basis. Additionally we provide application developers a free tool to monitor their own and competing applications in all app stores.

3. What has been your company’s greatest achievement to-date?
Within a short period of time, we were able to gain a solid position for Distimo in the rapidly developing mobile app market, working with leading handset manufacturers and carriers around the globe.

4. What is your company currently working on that is going to move the industry forward?
We are constantly improving our analyses of the mobile app store market, providing increased transparency for handset manufacturers, carriers and developers. The insights that we deliver will help these companies make well-founded decisions in their mobile content strategies.

5. What is exciting you most in 2010 (either personally or professionally)?
We have a tremendously exciting year ahead. The opportunities for mobile content have never been larger. With over 35 mobile application stores already in the market and a growing number of app store enabled devices, the worldwide consumer reach of mobile content is showing a strong growth path. Everything is in place to bring innovative new mobile content services to the market and it will be great experiencing all the new things to come.

6. What is the most important piece of technology in your life?
My mobile phone, by far.

7. What mobile device(s) do you use?
At Distimo, everybody in the team switches from primary mobile device every few months. This helps us understand better how users experience the various platforms and stores. The devices I used the last few months are the Nokia E71, iPhone and the Android G1.

8. What’s your favourite application?
Shazam

9. What’s your ringtone?
None.

10. Which mobile industry blogs do you regularly read and why?
TechCrunch, GigaOM, VentureBeat. They provide great analyses on everything in Internet & mobile.

11. What is the biggest mobile content issue that is likely to affect the industry within the next 12 months?
Fragmentation of platforms, where developers need to tailor their applications to specific platform or handset versions.

12. Which other MEF member organisation do you most admire?
AdMob; the company heavily impacted the industry in a very short time span.



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