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
Ever wonder what a week as the No. 1 free iPhone app in the App Store translates to in downloads and ad revenues? One of the employees at mobile ad management platform Burstly created an app called Air Horn, which simply makes a very loud horn noise. The app, which had been out for over 6 months and had zero marketing dollars spent to promote it, recently hit the No. 1 spot on the Free App list.
Developed in less than three hours by Alex Miyamura, Air Horn was at the top spot for 8 days and just dropped to no. 2 this morning. Over the past week, Air Horn has made $20,000 from advertising (ad banners) and in-app purchases. → Read More
A year ago, I did a post highlighting Apple’s awesome-looking App Wall. The wall was a series of Apple monitors set up to show the App Store in a Matrix-like way. Arranged by color, each time an app was purchased, it would pulse. Of course, there were “only” 50,000 apps at the time, and Apple still couldn’t show them all on the display. Now there are over 225,000 apps, so Apple had to switch things up this year.
As you can see in the pictures and video below, the new App Wall is perhaps even a little prettier than last year’s model. It shows the top 50,000 apps in the App Store across 30 24-inch LED Cinema Displays. As each app is downloaded it falls into a stack (still color-coordinated) across the displays. Once the display hits 10,800 apps, it resets and starts over with app downloads. → Read More
App store analytics startup Distimo just released its May report, and zoomed in on the average number of days applications across various categories maintain their top rankings in Apple’s App Store. Analyzing data collected from November 2009 to April 2010, the company found that paid applications in the Top Overall, Games, Business and Entertainment categories stay in these categories for 27, 39, 59 and 38 days on average, respectively.
Free applications stay in the Top 100 for a significantly shorter time in those categories, with 19, 21 and 39 days on average, respectively. The exception to the rule seems to be the Entertainment category, in which free apps stay in the Top 100 for a slightly longer period of time than paid applications; 43 days compared to 38 days. → Read More
It’s amazing what taking one of the best iPhone apps, making it free, and giving it a better name will do. Actually, it’s not. Twitter for iPhone has rocketed to the number 1 app (free app, but undoubtedly overall as well) in the App Store following its release yesterday. And Apple has wasted no time heaping praise on the app in its own way, by making it the coveted iPhone App of the Week in the App Store.
Twitter for iPhone, of course, is the new name for Tweetie, the app made by the company Atebits (really, Loren Brichter) until they were acquired by Twitter in April. While Tweetie itself was already extremely popular (that tends to happen when you make the best-of-class app), its popularity is bound to hit a whole different level now. First of all, the app used to cost $2.99, but Twitter decided to make it free. Perhaps more importantly though, the new branding — simply “Twitter” in the App Store — makes it much more visible to the masses looking for the best Twitter app through search. → Read More
One of the most commonly asked questions we get from both developers and industry outsiders is: how much money can I make developing apps? It’s a hard question to answer.
So we decided to conduct a survey. We asked for sale sdata from 124 developers that market applications ranging in price from 99 cents to $79.99. This survey was conducted on apps that ran the gamut of popularity, from wildly successful to barely breaking three figures. Developers were anywhere from funded companies with multiple titles under their belt, to first time, single-person authors. Both regular app developers, as well as game developers were included. This mining of data was intended to cover the entire iPhone app industry as a whole, without allowing outliers to skew the data too much in one direction.
The following financial information is pulled from 96 developers who provided in-depth sales data and pricing metrics.
This guest post was written by Alex Ahlund, the former CEO of AppVee and AndroidApps, which was recently acquired by mobile app directory Appolicious. He is currently an advisor to Appolicious. → Read More
Earlier today, testers of the new mobile payment service, Square, got a scare.
Emails were sent out suggesting that users had changed their bank account information, and Square was emailing to let them know that the new account was verified. The only problem? These users didn’t actually change a thing. Obviously, this caused some concern, as did the note at the bottom of the email, “If you have not requested this change, please contact support@squareup.com.” After Square started receiving emails wondering what was going on, they sent out a second email letting users know that nothing was wrong, they were just tweaking the backend of the system, and forgot to turn off email notifications for current testers. “Your bank account has not been affected. Square, and your data, have not be compromised in any way,” the email read.
I spoke to co-founder Jack Dorsey tonight about the mix-up, and he assures me that this was in no way a breach of security. Obviously, people are on high-alert for these types of things given the news last week that some credit card information ended up on Google compliments of the startup Blippy. But today’s Square incident was just a poorly-timed email, nothing more. → Read More
“That is the sound of inevitability…”
I’m reminded of this quote from The Matrix as I read headline after headline around the blogosphere about how Facebook and Apple and their (at least relatively) closed ecosystems are going to destroy the fabric of the web as we know it. Me? I’m not worried in the slightest bit. Why? Because it occurs to me that what’s going on now is just a part of a cycle. A necessary cycle. Yes, the web (by which I mean the entire Internet), it seems to me, is cyclical.
Just as the United States goes through periods where conservatives being in power gives way to liberals being in power, the web is currently transitioning from open systems dominating to closed systems taking over. Nowhere is this more evident than with Apple’s App Store, and Facebook. The masses, for whatever reason (and there are reasons, more on that later), are embracing these restricted platforms. And obviously, it has some people scared shitless. → Read More
Earlier today, a number of publications (including us) ran with the story that the App Store was closing in on 5,000 apps, with 4,870. These numbers came from analytics startup Distimo, which generally has good data and insight into the various app stores. But, naturally, it’s always better to get your data from the source. And while Apple, unsurprisingly, isn’t talking, they don’t have to. Because the iPad is.
The number of iPad apps in the App Store is actually already well past 5,000. How do I know? Sometime in the past couple of days, Apple added a new “Release Date” area to the iPad version of the App Store. This resides next to the standard “New” and “What’s Hot” areas along the top of the store. It’s simply a new way to sort through the apps. But this area has another nifty feature: it tells you how many apps there are in total so you know where you are in the navigation. According to this number, there are 5,351 iPad apps in the App Store. → Read More
There are few people who know the ins and outs of the web as well as Joe Hewitt. For the past decade, he’s had his hands deep in everything from Netscape, to AOL, to Firefox, to Facebook (where he currently works). Hewitt also knows a thing or two about the iPhone. He’s the one who first built Facebook’s excellent iPhone web app (before there were native apps on the iPhone), and then the native app — which is one of the best apps on the platform. So when he rants about something (as he does from time-to-time), people listen. And today he went on one such rant.
Following Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ post about Flash this morning, Hewitt went on Twitter and started going off with some of this thoughts. I asked Hewitt if I could recap them; his response, “sure, why not.” Hewitt, some may recall, quit iPhone development over his distaste for some App Store policies. Today, seeing a wave of anti-Flash talk on Twitter spurred by Jobs’ post, Hewitt started out: → Read More
Look, I get the porn thing. Well, sort of. But now Apple has gone too far.
iSealClub is the latest app to be rejected from the App Store. In it, you yes, club seals. I’m shocked — shocked! — that Apple would reject such an app.
Developer Matthew Smyth writes: → Read More
Before there was even an App Store, I knew there was something to UrbanSpoon. Several million downloads and a sale to IAC later, I can safely say I was right. Now the team behind it is trying to capture the magic all over again with its new free iPad app.
On the face of it, UrbanSpoon for the iPad may not seem as useful as it is for the iPhone. After all, most people don’t just whip out their iPad on the street when they’re looking for a restaurant (though some may when the 3G version hits, who knows). But plenty of dinner choices are made right before you leave the house — and that’s what UrbanSpoon for the iPad is perfect for. → Read More
Basically, since its initial launch, one of the most annoying things about the iPod (and now iPhone, iPad, etc) is that you have to plug it into your computer via USB to sync it. Sure, this also allows you to recharge your device, but I’d love to say, charge it in a holder next to my bed (since I also use it as an alarm) and wirelessly sync it over WiFi. A new app allows you to do that. Too bad it’s likely to be rejected.
As you can see in the video below, WiFi Sync allows you to do exactly what the name promises. Once you complete a few steps to authenticate your iPod/iPhone and then your computer, you can begin syncing wirelessly. It just works. The problem, of course, that Apple is likely to have with it is unauthorized interaction with their software, iTunes. → Read More
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