Weekend Mobile Industry Snippets!
In the latest statistics report by AndroLib, the Apple App Store has about 250,000 apps, and nearly 70% are paid apps while 30% are free. The Android Market has about 100,000 apps, and contrastingly, it has 35% paid apps and 65% free apps.
148apps.biz reports that there are about 630 new apps in the App Store daily, compared to about 590 per day last month on Android. Also, since Android is an open-source system, a lot of developers may come from an open-source background and are used to giving away their work. Another thought is that the Android Market only supports purchases in 13 markets while the App Store does so in 90.
It is interesting to note that the more popular an app is in the Market, the more likely it is to be free. For example, of the 838 apps that have been downloaded more than 250,000 times, only one of them is a paid app.
Sources:
http://www.androlib.com/appstats.aspx
http://androidheadlines.com/2010/09/app-store-vs-android-market-how-much-is-paid-for.html
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
The Android Market has surpassed 100,000 application submissions, according to a report from Androlib’s blog. Androlib however, claims that of the 100,000 applications, not every one is active, and there are only about 83,000 active ones.
A problem in Androlib’s calculations is that they don’t consider applications unpublished from the Market, which means a developer can published and unpublish an app and it will still be counted as an activation. This means that many thousands of developers, at one point, published 100,000 apps. The future of the Android Market appears bright.
Source:
http://blog.androlib.com/2010/07/30/CrossingThe100000ApplicationsMark.aspx
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
For some time, Google has been talking about a new and more secure system for protecting applications from pirates and dishonest re-funders. They have announced that the system goes live. The new system looks seamless. It requires a bit of modification to each application, so apps already on the market won’t be protected until their developers choose to update them.
Developers include a set of code libraries provided by Google, and then use those libraries to send a message to the Android Market app requesting the user’s licensing status. The Market then checks through its own database to see if a user really did buy the app, and then sends a message back to the app with all the details.
The system is free for developers to implement, It works on any Android handset running Android OS 1.5 or later.
Sources:
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/28/google-rolls-out-androids-new-anti-piracy-mechanism/
http://www.androidguys.com/2010/07/27/google-announces-licensing-service-combat-piracy/
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
The Guardian has announced in a report that Android smartphone sales in the United Kingdom have tripled since the beginning of the year. Now, one in every ten handsets sold in the UK is running on the Android OS, and contract market share has grown just over 10% from Q1 2010 (3%) to Q2 2010 (13.2%). In addition, while contract market sales are up under 1%, Android sales are up a whopping 350%.
Of all the smartphones, the HTC Desire and the HTC Legend remain the most popular handsets in the UK, but the Samsung Galaxy S will present another attractive option for the users. The HTC Wildfire also presents an attractive smartphone at a lower price, which will bring consumers who can’t afford the high-end phones into the market.
Apple has done a fantastic job in marketing the iPhone to be synonymous with a smartphone. However, Android has done a remarkable job in such a short time branding itself and it will only continue to grow stealthily.
Sources:
http://www.androidcentral.com/android-phone-sales-300-year
http://androidheadlines.com/2010/07/android-sales-turbo-boost-in-uk.html
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Google’s Tim Bray mentioned in a short post on the Android Developers Blog that the Android team is working on “introducing new payment options” for the Android Market. Based on the portions of the Developer Agreement that are changing, the change will most likely involve a wider roll out of carrier billing as an option when we purchase apps.
T-Mobile is the only carrier that allows its customers to put app charges on their monthly phone bill. Given that the Developer Agreement changes usually take effect in 30 days, the guess is that the changes are at least a month out.
Sources:
http://androidspin.com/2010/07/24/android-market-adding-new-payment-options/
http://www.androidguys.com/2010/07/24/payment-options-android-market/
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
We’ve talked about this before. We all know from the Android developers site that there are lots of phones out there running on Android 2.1, but there’s something missing from what we’re being told; something that Google’s not ready to divulge.
The chart here comes from date on its developer site about different versions accessing the Android Market for apps. One thing to note is that the only device out there running on 2.2 Froyo is the Nexus One, which was officially sold out just moments ago. Some phones however, are about to have a Froyo update soon.
The biggest threat for Android developers, as we all know, is platform fragmentation. Old versions of Android can’t run apps that target more recent versions, though old apps can run on the new platform. The later Android versions have all sorts of features that you don’t get on the others too.
These are the timings of the version releases, which means that this chart covers approximately one year.
1.5: 30 April 2009
1.6: 15 September 2009
2.1: 12 January 2010
2.2: 20 May 2010
There are certain issues that these graphs don’t show us.
We do not know whether people with newer versions of Android are more likely to access the Android Market. We also do not know what proportion of Android apps are written for what version of Android. Although Android apps are forwards-compatible, a user will certainly be put off visiting the Market if he went there once on a 1.5 or 1.6 phone and found that pretty much everything required a later version.
Source:
http://androidheadlines.com/2010/07/android-very-fragmented-and-google-not-saying-so.html
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
The Korean smartphone market has some interesting movement in regard to Android for the past week. Currently, Google allows no paid apps on the Korean Android Market, which does not make sense since many Android devices are launched in Korea first. There was a posting on their official Korea Blog claiming that Google will be allowing paid apps on the Korean Android Market soon, but this posting was removed and deemed as a mistake. After which, a Google Korea official clarified that Google has an interesting habit of opening up paid apps to more than one country at a go, so it will be interesting to see if other countries will be getting paid apps at the same time as Korea. The official also claimed that Google will keep on eye on the developments on this story as time goes on. Nothing is confirmed yet, however.
Source:
http://www.androidguys.com/2010/07/15/korea-paid-apps/#more-17122
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Google Senior VP of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg announced during yesterday’s second-quarter earnings call, that the Android Market has now more than 70,000 applications. That’s up from 30,000 in April, and also from the 68,000 count that Andy Rubin announced in June at the Motorola Droid X event. In fact, Jonathan Rosenberg said that the search on Android devices grew 300% in the first half of 2010.
Sources:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/15/android-costs/
http://www.androidcentral.com/android-market-now-officially-has-more-70000-applications
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
AndroLib has reported that an estimated 1 billion Android apps have been downloaded through the Android market so far. This popular application database, which is complete with remote installation and synchronization tools, makes it convenient for users to discover new apps and install them to their devices quickly.
Also, there is a new makeover to celebrate this occasion. The site’s search engine has been updated to make app discovery much easier. Users are now able to search by price, minimum rating, number of downloads, and categories instead of just the traditional keyword-based search present for quite some time.
New features include scoreboard and video sections. Also, AppBrain now gives developers the option to sign up and customize their application’s page on the site as well as access advanced stats to see how their application is doing against the others in the market.
Source:
http://androidheadlines.com/2010/07/androlib-over-1-billion-apps-downloaded-makeover-is-live.html
Weekend Mobile Industry Snippets!
Android has really become more and more popular these days. Just last September, the Android Market had only 10,000 apps. Now, 10 months later, the Market has over 90,000 apps and is bound to surpass 100,000 before the month is over. Judging from the pace of the Android Market’s growth , it wouldn’t be surprising to see it catching up with the iTunes market within a year.
Another point to note is how many new apps are being added every month, and it’s another impressive result. Hopefully, when Android updates their online market we’ll be able to search out the newest apps much more easily.
Source:
http://androidspin.com/2010/07/10/android-market-on-the-verge-of-hitting-100k/
