As you’ve probably heard, Apple has been taking steps to make whole iPhone/iPad/iPod touch app development process a bit more orderly. They actually now have some (quirky) guidelines in place to help developers, and they’ve un-banned the use of some third-party development tools. It appears they’ve also quietly done something else: ended App Store name squatting.
This issue was talked about quite a bit last October, when a developer learned someone had secured the rights for the name he wanted to use for his app in iTunes Connect, but hadn’t actually made an app to go along with it. The situation, as described by PC World last year: → Read More
This morning, Apple finally released a set of guidelines to iOS developers — a move which should go a long way in making the process seem less arbitrary. We’ve already posted the basics of what you need to know — those are, the high-level rules written in refreshingly non-corporate speak (“we don’t need anymore Fart apps” and “if you run to the press and trash us, it never helps”). But I’ve also gone over all the individual sections with the more specific rules, and found a number of interesting ones worth pointing out.
Behold: the best of the App Store rules. (As Apple notes, this is a “living document” subject to change at any time.): → Read More
Asymco, a Helsinki-based app developer / industry analysis advisory firm, ironically founded and led by a longtime Nokia manager, just posted this telling chart on its blog:
According to the firm’s research, iTunes download rates for music and iOS apps are both still growing, but accelerating much faster for the latter. In fact, Asymco posits, based on data from the recently updated Music and App Store, that the total number of app downloads has already reached the same level as that of songs in less than half the time. → Read More
You might say the company’s just a tad late to the party, but Miniclip has finally seen the light and is expanding its casual gaming empire by entering the world of mobile games.
With a self-declared user base of more than 57 million casual gamers worldwide and a library of more than 600 online games, it’s a wonder really that the London-based company hasn’t made the move sooner.
After all, Apple’s App Store for one now offers roughly 250,000 apps, many of which are of course casual games and have been available for years. → Read More
Research2guidance, a Berlin-based research organization specialized in all things mobile, recently forecasted the worldwide smartphone application market to reach $15 billion by 2013.
In an update, the firm says the global smartphone app market has in fact already reached $2.2 billion in the first six months of this year. → Read More
Reading over the comments on our post (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) about the Apple patent diagram fiasco last week, you would have thought Apple was the most evil company in the world. Many believed that Apple was attempting to patent ideas that third-party developers came up with. Essentially, the thought was that Apple was trying to steal from their own developer community — and were doing so that blatantly. I mean, people actually believed that.
As we noted at the time, this was not likely the case. Instead, Apple was probably just using diagrams of existing third-party apps for examples of other things they were actually trying to patent. Lo and behold, today comes word from the third-party developer at the center of all of this confirming this to be the case. → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo in its latest report once again focuses on in-app purchases across a variety of mobile application stores, Apple’s App Store in particular.
According to Distimo, the percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the App Store for iPad (10%) compared to that for the iPhone (2%). → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo in its latest report once again focuses on in-app purchases across a variety of mobile application stores, Apple’s App Store in particular.
According to Distimo, the percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the App Store for iPad (10%) compared to that for the iPhone (2%). → Read More
iChatr, a clone of the infamous Chatroulette, has been pulled from the Apple app store. Apparently, Apple isn’t cool with inappropriate use of anonymity and cannot condone the app. → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo last week published its report for June 2010, and zoomed in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms once more.
The startup found that more than half of mobile apps are priced below or equal to $2 in Android Market, Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPad, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog.
The exceptions to the rule: BlackBerry App World (which doesn’t allow apps priced below $2.99) and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo last week published its report for June 2010, and zoomed in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms once more.
The startup found that more than half of mobile apps are priced below or equal to $2 in Android Market, Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPad, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog.
The exceptions to the rule: BlackBerry App World (which doesn’t allow apps priced below $2.99) and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. → Read More
One of the best shooting games ever created, R-Type, is soon heading to the App Store. Made in 1987 by legendary gaming company Irem, the classic arcade title has been ported to countless platforms so far. The iPhone version will be developed by EA Mobile, which just announced the game on its Facebook page. → Read More
Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Krishna Subramanian, co-founder of mobile ad exchange Mobclix.
Mobile search is still one of the big unclaimed prizes on the mobile web. Everyone from Google and Yahoo to Apple is going after it, but Microsoft’s Bing may stealthily become the king of the castle by aggressively promoting Bing through mobile apps. Let’s look at each player’s mobile search strategy.
During the Apple keynote in April, Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 4.0, iAd and a few other features even he didn’t seem too excited about. Out of the many mediocre features, Mr. Jobs happened to squeeze in a declaration that, “ On mobile, search hasn’t happened. People aren’t searching on their phones.” During the keynote at WWDC this month, Mr. Jobs declared that iPhone 4 users would have the opportunity to select their search engine from among Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Out of the three, Bing got a special endorsement from Mr. Jobs.
Is Mr. Jobs trying to blindside the other players in this space by making them think he is not concerned about search? I’m sure all of the search traffic he is sending to Google is driving him nuts. Meanwhile, Google has happily—and quite beautifully—optimized their search results page on the iPhone to make it extremely convenient for local searches by incorporating phone numbers, maps and more within the Safari window. → Read More
By now, many of you have your new iPhone 4s. And even more of you have an iPhone equipped with the latest iOS 4 software. So you want to find the apps tailored to run on it, right? Well, now Apple has a section of the App Store for that.
Apple has singled out 36 apps that it dubs “Awesome iOS 4 Apps” to get you started with the new OS. Not surprisingly, they highlight many of the ones we highlighted last weekend right before the OS came out. Included here are are apps such as Pandora, Dropbox, Twitter, Loopt, How To Cook Everything, and GodFinger. → Read More
In terms of the hardware, one of the only completely new features on the iPhone 4 is the gyroscope. It’s so new, in fact, that third-party developers haven’t had a chance to play around with it yet because they didn’t have access to the iPhone 4 hardware until today (or at least two days ago). And because they didn’t have the hardware, that means there are a sad lack of apps that use the feature so far. But actually, there is one out there. Ngmoco’s Eliminate: GunRange. And it’s awesome.
The game itself is simple. You pick a gun (preferably a high-powered semi-automatic one) and head to the shooting range. But the game shines thanks to the gyroscope — which is required for you to play. Rather than dragging your finger around the screen to tell your gun where to aim, you simply tilt the iPhone itself. Sure, you could sort of do this previously with the compass built in to the iPhone 3GS — but trust me, this is much, much better. → Read More
It took Apple’s review team close to a month, but the update to the Rdio iPhone application is now finally available from the App Store (iTunes link).
It’s unclear why it took Apple this long, considering the update merely fixes some software bugs and adds one minor feature (remembering which song you were playing when you last closed the app). → Read More
During his keynote address at WWDC on Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs rattled off some key statistics. Among them was that there are 8,500 native iPad apps. Actually, at the time, Apple had over 9,000, but we’ll let that slide. How do I know how many app there were? Because unlike other stores Apple oversees, they actually posts the number of apps available for the iPad. And that number just hit 10,000.
If you go to the App Store app on the iPad and click on the “Release Date” area, you can see the total for yourself. Along the top of that area, it will read “1 – 12 of xxxx” — “xxxx” being the current number of apps that are built to run on the iPad. → Read More
Today, 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 (such as earlier this year with the iPad OS, which was iPhone OS 3.2 — yes, it’s a little confusing), Apple wants to make sure it has apps to show off when the new OS hits on June 21 (three days before the iPhone 4 launch).
And this launch is important because it brings the ability for third-party applications to run in the background for the first time. Earlier today, Pocket-lint noted that “massive delays” were expected for multitasking apps. But there were two major problems with this report. First, it seemed to suggest that the iPhone 4 was the key to multitasking. In fact, it is iOS 4 that brings the ability to multitask, and it brings it to the iPhone 3GS and latest generation iPod touch as well. More importantly, they noted that “in our initial testing, only Apple apps, like the Clock, Mail and Safari, can multitask. That’s it!” Um, that’s because there are no third-party apps available yet that have this built in. That’s exactly why Apple is sending out emails that they’re going to start accepting them now. → Read More
If you have an iPhone or an Android phone and you’ve ever visiting reddit.com, you know it sucks. Reddit has never been about design, but the text is so small and the layout is spaced so poorly that it’s basically impossible to use and read on a small screen. The mobile optimized version of Reddit isn’t much better. Today, that finally changes.
Reddit has completely revamped the mobile web version of its site to be absolutely usable on touch screen devices. Gone are small, virtually unclickable buttons and links — with the new version, it’s all big buttons and easy-to-read coloring. → Read More
