Messaging app Line, which recently announced it has passed 150 million users, has withdrawn a function from its iOS app that allowed users to gift paid-for stickers to each other by paying for them with a virtual currency. The change, spotted earlier by The Next Web, was made at Apple’s request, said the company in a blog post today. → Read More
After booting out app discovery and promotion platform, AppGratis, from the App Store earlier this month for violating two clauses of its developer T&Cs, Apple has now followed up with a second blow to the business — by killing its ability to send push notifications to existing users of its app. AppGratis has claimed it has some 12 million users of its app. (<1 million of whom have so far… → Read More
Research firm Forrester has put out a new report exploring best practices for developers trying to get their apps noticed. Its findings include that word of mouth and social discovery play a key role in new apps finding loyal users, at least in Europe. The research also underlines the dominant role that mainline app stores continue to play in app discovery on the iOS and Android platforms. → Read More
AppGratis, the French app promotion and discovery platform startup that was recently ejected from the App Store on the grounds that it violates Apple’s developer T&Cs, is protesting the ban by petitioning its users to send supportive emails on its behalf. The petition has apparently garnered close to half a million emails so far but criticisms of its paid promotion business model are mounting. → 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 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… → Read More
French game developer Gameloft, listed on Euronext Paris, this afternoon shared its 2009 financial results with the world. The video game publisher achieved consolidated sales of €122.0 million – roughly $170 million – for 2009, up 11% compared to 2008.
The company also specified ‘iPhone revenue’, which presumably means its income from distribution of its games on both the iPhone and iPod… → Read More
App store analytics company Distimo has released its December report on mobile apps, this time zooming in on the physical location of publishers in Google Android Market, and how the prices of their apps compares to those of developers in other countries.
Distimo found that publishers in the Euro zone (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain) tend to price their applications… → Read More
Apple has responded to the FCC’s request for information around its rejection of various Google and third party iPhone applications for the iPhone.
In short, Apple denies that they rejected the Google Voice application, but they go into great detail about how the Google Voice application hurts “the iPhone’s distinctive user experience.” All of those statements are either untrue, or misleading… → Read More
A lone messenger has emerged from the impenetrable fortress that is Apple’s App Store, and his name is Phil Schiller. Earlier this week, John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a lengthy column detailing the plight of Ninjawords (iTunes Link), a sleek iPhone dictionary that uses Wiktionary as its data source. Gruber wrote that the application had been rejected for including numerous common swear… → Read More
Over the last few days we’ve seen a lot of attention centered on the new iPhone application from Spotify, the so-called ‘iTunes Killer’ subscription service that lets you plays songs on demand from a library of millions of tracks. We still don’t know if that app is going to make it through Apple’s nebulous approval process, but it’s already got some possible competition: Grooveshark, a streaming… → Read More
Apple is really, really close to hitting 1 billion app downloads across the world, according to its new countdown page. If you download an app, you’ll be enrolled in a contest to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. TechCrunch is holding its own contest in honor of this occasion. Whoever guesses when it will hit one billion, and is closest in minutes… → Read More
Are iPhone app developers getting paid on time from Apple? Not all of them. On this iPhone developer forum, there are numerous threads from developers who are complaining about delays in payments for January and not being paid the amount of money the developers are in fact due from sales. And we’ve received one complaint directly from an iPhone app developer that Apple is late on its payments… → Read More
Google’s official Android Developers and Mobile blogs haven’t been updated yet, but according to an e-mail from Eric Chu to mobile application builders first republished by Phandroid, Android Market will become available to users in Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Netherlands, and Poland in the coming weeks.
Hello,
I’m writing to let you know that Android Market will become available to… → Read More
Apple’s App Store has finally given developers the ability to release up to 50 promotional codes for their applications, allowing them distribute their apps to press and friends free of charge directly through the App Store.
While the feature may seem like a minor addition to most people, it will be a boon for developers looking to help spread the word about their new applications. Before now… → Read More
We have stumbled across a flaw in iPhone security that allows third party developers to update and execute arbitrary code from their applications at will, totally circumventing Apple’s App Store approval process. Normally, applications (and all of their updates) have to go through a lengthy review process before they’re posted to the App Store, as Apple combs through them to ensure they don’t do… → Read More
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