Archive for the ‘Apps & Sites’ Category
| Q&A with GetJar’s Patrick Mork | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, August 9th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites, Interviews | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The more you learn about independent app stores like GetJar, the harder it is too understand why Apple’s App Store receives all the media attention. While Apple’s – for obvious reasons – restricts the target market to Apple handsets (i.e. about 2-3 percent of mobile handsets), GetJar features downloads for all sorts of feature phones – the majority of handsets – and smartphones. All the top performing apps work on multiple types of handsets. Q&A with Patrick Mork, chief marketing officer, GetJarQ1) How many applications are available on GetJar?
Q6) How many downloads does the average app get in (i) the top 10? (ii) the top 50?
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| Mobile Application Development Trends | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, June 8th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites, Geek & Tech | ||||||
If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner looking into the mobile application industry, either to ride the wave or to capitalize on the fact that your customers are spending more time with their phone, this post could come in very handy Bellow you may find some thoughts on how the Mobile Development industry will evolve in the nearest future. 1. Micropayments 2. Enhanced Security 3. Business App Store 4. Location-Based Technology 5. Social Based Applications 6. Augmented Reality (AR) 7. High Entry Barriers for Fledgling Developers 8. Mobile Application Advertising 9. Importance of Marketing for Applications 10. HTML 5 – Native Apps vs Web Apps What other trends do you think will be likely this year for the mobile applications industry? Kristina Kozlova | ||||||
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| Skype will bring video to Android phones | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, May 29th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites | ||||||
In response to queries about its future product plans, Skype issued a statement that indicates the company plans to offer an application to all Android handsets later this year, and it will include a video chat feature. The statement reads, “Skype envisions a world where video plays a larger role in the way we communicate. It’s on computers, televisions, and it will eventually be coming to mobile devices too. We’re betting big on video, and we intend to set the bar on mobile video calling, and it’s something we’re going to do this year. We will be bringing a direct to consumer app to the Android marketplace later this year. This application will be available for all consumers globally to download regardless of carriers.” Right now, Skype on Android is limited to Verizon Wireless’ handsets. Competitor Fring recently announced a new Android application that offers free video calling. Fring aggregates together a number of services, such as Skype, MSN, ICQ, GTalk and other IM platforms into a single application. | ||||||
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| 6 reasons why mobile apps will become as important for companies as corporate websites | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, May 22nd, 2010 :: Apps & Sites, News & Events | ||||||
By Egle Mikalajunaite and Ralf-Gordon Jahns Mobile apps have been around for some time and there is a lot of hype around the developing market. But how sustainable is this development, and where does it lead? In summary, our analysis shows that apps will eventually be as important for companies as web pages are today. The main drivers: What are the reasons for this optimistic view? Here are just six reasons why we think that apps will become as important as Websites to companies in the next years: 1. Ubiquity of smartphones: Smartphones will increasingly replace feature phones in stores. Nearly everyone will be able to use smartphone apps, not just – as of now – business people, social networkers and gamers. The main driver will be a reduction in handset prices, which will decrease to 100 Euro for most starter devices. 2. Manifoldness of possibilities: Smartphones are small computers which are becoming more and more powerful. They will be suitable for an increasing number of tasks which have previously been restricted to laptops or desktops. Today smartphone apps are used by companies to promote their brand or product, or to provide access to their existing products. In the future we will see a lot more use-cases, e.g. new products enabled by apps, mobile health, mobile selling, or apps which help to improve working efficiency within a company. 3. Ubiquity of app stores: For the foreseeable future, Smartphones will always depend on the app stores. If you have a smartphone or advanced feature phone you will have easy and convenient access to the world of apps. 4. Unmatched user-experience: Apps offer a user-experience which mobile Websites or widgets are unable to provide. 5. Proximity to customers: Mobile devices, especially Smartphones, are much more personal and intimate devices than a laptop or desktop device. For most users their phones are never further than 1 meter away 24/7. Imagine how attractive it is for consumer goods, food, and myriad other companies across the economy to be able to place their products and services so close to consumers. 6. Better visibility: Although there is a lot of clamor about the discoverability of apps, especially in the Apple App Store, standing out among 140,000 apps is much easier than being found amongst millions of websites. In addition, these distribution platforms are stores, and unlike the web or its search engines, they are designed to sell and present products. Cross-selling and promotions are components of their core features. The new geneneration of app stores make it easier than ever before to be in the forefront of millions of potential customers’ minds. Although there is still a long way to go before many companies learn how to benefit from and how to engage in this exciting new market, but it won’t take long before it becomes standard business practice, especially for media, consumer goods, automotive, and food companies to communicate with their customers via an app. This applies especially to the Western and Asian countries with high smartphone shipment rates but will also impact emerging markets with a short time-delay. | ||||||
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| Mobile App Developers Not Happy with Revenue Share Agreement | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, May 13th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites | ||||||
Eighty percent of developers in the USA think they should receive more than 30% of the revenue generated by their apps in an app store according to the Spring North American Development Survey. Survey taken from more than 400 developers conducted last month. | ||||||
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| Women drive mobile app growth | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, May 10th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites | ||||||
Female subscribers download twice as much mobile content as their male counterparts according to mobile entertainment destination Myxer’s latest BoomBox report. Downloads among female users topped 4.5 million in April, compared to 2.2 million among males–Myxer reports there are approximately 1.7 times as many females as males downloading content each month, adding that each female that visits downloads 17 percent more content than the average male. Myxer adds that the average female Android device owner downloaded 7.6 pieces of content during the month of April, while the average Android male user visiting the site only downloaded 6 items during that time, a difference of 21 percent. By comparison, females on iPhones downloaded 3.0 items while males download 2.8 items, a difference of only 6 percent. | ||||||
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| Gambling on your iPhone | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, May 10th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites | ||||||
Betfair Brings Gambling to the iPhone UK company Betfair, specialized in betting, seems to be the first company to release an actual betting application on iTunes. This service is only available in Ireland and the UK though. Consumers who downloaded the app can bet on major sports and other events that address the general public (for example the elections). To avoid breaking foreign gambling laws, the GPS info is used to ensure the client is in the UK or Ireland. There is however, no way yet to make sure the client is not underage (but that is a problem on any virtual betting platform). | ||||||
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| Flash on Android | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, April 22nd, 2010 :: Apps & Sites, OS & Handsets | ||||||
Mike Chambers is Adobe’s principal product manager for the Flash platform. After having complained about the aggressive attitude of Apple in refusing to allow Flash on the iPhone and iPad he had this to say about Android : Because this is Flash, it is rather trivial to port games created with Flash that target the iPhone to target other operating systems, such as Android. At FlashCamp San Francisco on Friday night, David Wadhwani (GM and VP of the Flash Platform) showed off a number of games running on Android that had been created with Flash, many of which had already been deployed as iPhone games. My personal favorites were Chroma Circuit and GridShock created by Josh Tynjala of Bowler Hat Games. Both games were originally developed as browser based games and were then updated to target the iPhone (Chroma Circuit was featured on the iTunes app store). Josh recently updated and optimized them to target Flash Player on Android, and the results have been impressive. There have already been a couple of developers who have moved their Flash based content from the iPhone to Flash on Android (couple of examples below) and I expect that this is a trend we will be seeing more and more of. Here are some links to developers who originally targeted the iPhone with their Flash content and are now deploying to Android: * Adobe AIR for Android: Chroma Circuit and Qrossfire Videos
Both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for Android are in pre-release testing. If you are interested in being notified when we expand the testing, you can sign up at: * Flash Player 10.1 for Android Beta Personally, I am going to shift all of my mobile focus from iPhone to Android based devices (I am particularly interested in the Android based tablets coming out this year) and not focus on the iPhone stuff as much anymore. This includes both Flash based, and Objective-C based iPhone development. While I actually enjoy working in Objective-C, I don’t have any current plans to update and / or maintain my existing native iPhone applications (including the AS3 Reference Guide, and Timetrocity). As I wrote previously, I think that the closed system that Apple is trying to create is bad for the industry, developers and ultimately consumers, and that is not something that I want to actively promote. Don’t worry though, I definitely plan to get both Pew Pew and Bacon Unicorn Adventure running on Android and am planning on open sourcing both. Also Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen said “We have a number of excited partners who are working aggressively with us to bring Flash to their devices, whether they be smartphones as well as handsets, and so companies like Google or RIM or Palm are going to be releasing versions of Flash on smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year.” | ||||||
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| Mobile Gamers are Shifting to Smartphones | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, April 20th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites, News & Events | ||||||
According to ComScore’s latest study, thirteen percent of US based mobile gamers have started to trade in their featurephones for smartphones to boost their gaming experience. ComScore reported 58.6 million featurephone based mobile gamers in February 2009 versus 50.9 million of them in February 2010. In the same period, the number of smartphone gamers grew 60%. Smartphone owners are also more likely to play mobile games on their phones. 47.1% of the smartphone owners play mobile games versus 15.7% on featurephones.
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| Opera iPhone app downloaded a million times in 24 hours | ||||||
| By Shaun Zelber, April 19th, 2010 :: Apps & Sites, OS & Handsets | ||||||
Just a quick update on this article from last week : Web browser maker Opera topped the iPhone application download chart within 24 hours of releasing its free browser app. It has been downloaded 1,023,380 times since its launch on 14 April. It took three weeks for Apple to approve the program, which has already been developed for other mobile phone platforms. Opera Mini is not the first alternative to Apple’s Safari to be developed for the iPhone. | ||||||
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