Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Apple has begun emailing iPhone app developers to let them know they’re now accepting iOS 4-compatible apps in the App Store. Just as it does each time before a new OS launches, Apple wants to make sure it has apps to show off when the new OS hits on June 21.
And this launch is important because it brings the ability for third-party applications to run in the background for the first time. There are no third-party apps available yet that have multitasking for 3rd party apps built. That’s why Apple is sending out emails that they’re going to start accepting them now.
Developers can begin submitting these iOS 4-compatible apps now. But it’s not all good news for developers. When Apple makes a call for these new, specific applications, they usually shove other ones aside to make sure the can approve these special ones in time for a launch. Based on what is going around now, it appears that regular (non-iOS 4) apps are seeing approval wait times that are longer than normal already.
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Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple, announced that Apple’s mobile apps now number about 225,000 in the market today. Two days ago, at the Worldwide Developer Conference, he said approximately 15,000 apps are submitted each week to the store.
The store’s approval process was defended well, with claims stating that 95 percent of apps are given the go-ahead after seven days. The top three reasons the company blocked apps include:
1) The app is not working as described,
2) Use of private applications programming interfaces,
3) Crashing.
Apple is in second-place in terms of smartphone market share, just behind BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM). Apple also has more than three times the market share of Google’s Android operating system at 28 percent to 9 percent.
Source:
http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/06/07/stats-jobs-boasts-of-225000-apps-defends-approval-process/
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
MasterCard is challenging PayPal with a new iPhone and iPad app, named MoneySend. This is a free app and it allows anyone to transfer money to another account in the United States.
MoneySend is partly powered by Obopay. Through banks and credit unions, it allows users to send or request money via an iPhone app . Senders and receivers can either use an existing MasterCard account or a bank account. Also, users can create a virtual prepaid account through Bancorp Bank that is linked to an existing MasterCard credit card or checking account. The user designates an account for the MoneySend transaction, and then users can manage and trigger the exchanges through the app. Users who transfer money will incur a transaction fee and recipients don’t face any additional fees. Personal and financial information is never stored on the iPhone or iPad.
In fact, this is the second time MasterCard has competed with PayPal over the past week. Last week, MasterCard announced a definitive plan to open up its credit cards payments platform to developers to build innovative online and mobile apps. Clearly, MasterCard is making a big push to get into the mobile payments space; but PayPal is a tough competitor with massive reach and influence.
Sources:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/03/mastercard-takes-on-paypal-with-moneysend-iphone-app/
http://us.generation-nt.com/mastercard-launches-moneysend-iphone-ipad-press-2270091.html
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Appsfire, a mobile app discovery and sharing platform is launching a new website and iPhone app, improving its usefulness vastly. They want to make it easier for iPhone users to browse and discover great and useful apps out of the 200,000 apps available on the Appstore.
On the website, you can search for apps like how you would on the iPhone, but it also gives you the opportunity to discover apps by checking out lists compiled by specialized publishers, or collections of apps installed by tech pundits and thought leaders. There is also a tab to check out which apps you have installed, and which ones you might be interested in downloading and/or purchasing based on your App Store history.
The renewed iPhone app makes it easy to compare apps with your friends by just connecting through Bluetooth.
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Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Digg has just launched its own native application on Android Market. The app supports its core functionality, including the ability to Digg and bury stories and user comments. The new application comes only a week after Digg launched its highly success native application for iPhone.
Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/02/digg-launches-native-android-app/
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Distimo, an app store analytics startup is diversifying its business model and broadening its current offering of reports for operators and handset manufacturers with a new product called Monitor. This provides a solution that enables mobile application developers to collect and analyze relevant statistics about their works across app stores. It provides key analytics such as total daily downloads, revenues and global rankings worldwide of their applications. For now, statistics are limited to Apple’s App Store and Android Market, but they aim to do this for most popular mobile app stores in the near future.
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Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
eBay introduced 2 new iPhone apps designed to make sellers’ lives easier when it comes to listing items on the giant online marketplace from their phones. eBay also mentioned that it is on pace to reach a whopping $1.5 billion worth of goods sold via mobile phones in 2010.
The company claims that 1 item is purchased using eBay mobile every 2 seconds, through its iPhone app which has been downloaded 8 million times to date. eBay also disclosed that it will have an iPad
version of the eBay app.
With the apps, sellers can quickly take a picture of an item, list it in eBay’s auction format free of charge and share listings on Facebook or Twitter.
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Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Evernote, a company which creates software that serves as a memory aid, or external brain. The company gives away its product for free on a variety of platforms and charges a $5 per month subscription to the power users who want the most features. Phil Libin, chief executive, revealed how their business model makes sense and how to gain from it.
Evernote first launched its free version in June, 2008. The number of users grew gradually. There was no sharing function built-in with the software that would have made it inherently viral. The app was simply useful and users shared it with their friends.
Because of the nature of the app product, users who truly find the app useful will become regular users and come back every week or so. The longer people used it, the more reliant they become. Hence, more likely that they were to subscribe. Slowly, the cohort’s subscriptions grew over time.
Each time the company started talking about its subscriptions and new features, it got an increase in adoption. At the time when the first annual renewals came up, there was no decrease in the rate of renewals or sign-ups. The company became profitable on a gross profit basis in January, 2009, and now it earns a gross profit of 11 cents per active user per month.
The key to hanging on to older users is introducing new features. It is important to create a product that has a great long-term retention rate. And make something whose value increases over time. The most crucial thing is keeping your variable costs low.
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Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
How do you think about the evolution of mobile applications and the mobile web? Omar Hamoui, CEO of mobile advertising firm, AdMob, thinks that we are in the “Yahoo phase”, as it is still possible to find apps using directory style app stores.
As the number of apps grows into the millions and tens of millions, it’s going to become impossible to find the cool ones. ” The whole point of the app store is distribution, and a lot of its power is distribution.”
Hamoui feels that the iPhone and Android will continue to duke it out, and other platforms like Microsoft’s Windows phones and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry will recapture some of their buzz to become contenders as well. The only real difference compared to a few years ago is that all of these platforms realize they need to reach out to mobile developers, because that’s how they differentiate themselves.
Source:
http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/03/25/admob-omar-hamoui-yahoo-phase/
Daily Mobile Industry Snippets!
Knocking Live Video lets you send live video footage from your phone’s camera to another phone. Now, it is launching for Android phones as well.
The Android version allows you to share video with users of the iPhone app, and vice versa. Knocking, which is free, is being downloaded by 13,000 people every day and has been consistently in the top 10 most popular social networking apps on the iPhone since December.
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