Last month we hosted an event with China Unicom as part of our trip to Mobile World Congress 2012. It was an eye-opening presentation about the current opportunity for apps in China, with some brilliant information that should make any app developer take notice of this growing market.

For example, Chinese users are happy to pay for their apps – 90% of apps sold are paid for apps and in 2012 alone they are planning to add another 15m 3G connections to their existing base.

If you’re interested, get in touch with us on Twitter @bluevia or @jamesparton, as the China Unicom team would love to hear from international developers who want to launch or promote their apps in China.

View the presentation:

Read our live tweets from the event:

Earlier this year we celebrated BlueVia’s first birthday with a prize draw for our new members. We picked two winners and gave away a MacBook Air and Samsung Galaxy Nexus. We also asked the winners to tell us their story, to find out what sort of people are joining BlueVia. Here’s what they told us…

Andrew Farrell, from Matchbox Mobile

How long have you been a developer?
We founded Matchbox Mobile in 2005, although myself and the core team has worked on commercial software, embedded and mobile, since the late ‘90s. We were there at the beginning, you could say.

What is your specialist area?
Everything mobile, usually as early adopters working with platforms vendors using pre-release versions of tools and hardware to build technology demonstrators, proof of concepts, and showcase applications. Our experience is quite broad we’ve worked on device management to social networking, secure VoIP to NFC, gaming to banking.

What app or other development are you most proud of?
The ultrasound scanner app we wrote for Mobisante is something we are very proud to have been part of. We wrote both driver and app code for this portable medical system intended to bring down the cost of in-the-field mobile scanning. A portable handheld ultrasound probe plugs in via USB to a windows mobile device enabling users to perform and record a full ultrasound examination. The app won the prestigious Global Mobile Award for Best M-Health Innovation at Mobile World Congress 2011. I was pleased to accept the award on behalf of Mobisante from tech-friendly celeb Jonathan Ross.

What is the coolest thing you could dream up using the BlueVia APIs?

First a “What the hell happened last night?” app (Location/SMS/MMS APIs)

• A group of friends can register to a night out with their friends. Either from an app or by sending anSMS containing the night out “code”
• Throughout the night the phone’s locations are tracked by a service periodically. The service/apps also allow you to post pictures via the app using wifi/data or via MMS.
• It also allows the user just to post a status update.
• At the end of the night or the next morning the user who created the night out can end it via SMS or using a feature in the app. The service then builds an interesting slideshow showing the locations they visited along with the pictures, messages etc.
• Would be good for hen nights/stag do’s/ work parties etc

Another idea is a child location monitor (SMS & Location APIs)

• Child’s mobile signs up to service (by parent). If child goes outside of a designated radius the parent is notified.
• Not so much a spy app but just lets the parent know if their child has gone beyond a permitted range.

Nick Hanling

How long have you been a developer?
I’ve just got back into development recently after a break of a few years, but have been involved in the mobile sector for over 10 years. Currently in self-teach mode in my own time.

What is your specialist area?
For me, the areas that I am most interested in are user experience and security, which are not always comfortable bedfellows. A lot of my day job involves working with not-for-profit organisations and it’s interesting to see the challenges and opportunities that mobile devices bring to that sector

What app or other development are you most proud of?
Difficult to pick one. The ones that tend to stick in the memory are those where it was a great group of people I worked with and the impact the development had. Although it doesn’t sound exciting, one of those allowed people to more easily find out the tax credits and benefits they were entitled to.

What is the coolest thing you could dream up using the BlueVia APIs?
Hmm, as I’m getting on a bit I’m not sure ‘cool’ is a term that many people would associate with me. Having looked at some of the concepts at Wayra – I can’t compete with those.
So I’m not going to worry about being cool. it would be something that could be used in the not-for-profit sector:

• For the health-related charities, it would allow and help with self-monitoring of conditions and can help find the nearest source of help if needed.
• For those providing front-line services, an app that showed examples of services either near you or a location you selected and the impact that a donation from you could make.

Oh, and an app that allowed football fans to find out how many places above Port Vale their team is – looking at @jamesparton on Twitter prompted that idea. According to the BBC website now, that app would give me the answer “39 places above Port Vale” (Note from editor: everyone except James liked this idea )

Wayra is coming to Europe and BlueVia is getting involved.

In case you’re not aware of their success already in latin America, Wayra is a Telefonica initiative created to help innovative startups develop and launch their ideas. Earlier this month they announced that they are expanding their successful academy model to Europe. The first one will be in London and it will be followed across Europe in six more countries.

We are going to be teaming up with the Wayra team to offer our technical input, marketing support and advice to the chosen startups. As well as access to our communication and payment APIs, we’ll be attending each of the Wayra academies to present our experience and hosting start-up speed dating events to match up complimentary teams. BlueVia was created to enable innovative new business models based aroud the Telefonica network so we’re excitied to see how new startups could benefit from our APIs and support.

If you’re already using BlueVia in your startup and think that a Wayra academy could help, get in touch with us on Twitter. We would love to connect you with the team at Wayra and get you involved.

If you’ve got an idea for an NFC app that you’d like to develop, you should join us at the Isobar Create NFC hack on 24th & 25th March in London.

NFC-enabled mobile devices have the potential to change the way we communicate, interact and do business. This weekend hack is an opportunity to experiment with the latest tech (NFC-enabled devices from Samsung and BlackBerry will be on hand) as well as hear from experts in the field – including Brendan Murray, Chief NFC Engineer at Google.

BlueVia is attending to offer help you integrate our revenue-share APIs into your apps. We’re also looking for ideas with great potential. All ideas are owned by you but we’re looking to help you bring them to life through marketing support and a kick-starter fund.

Come along and hack with us. Join for the whole weekend or as much as you can make. Naturally it’s all free and refreshments will be provided.

Register before Thursday 8th March to confirm your place.