Posts tagged Mobile 2.0
Google Suggest Gets Location-Aware, Too
Jan 15th
Ostensibly to save you time typing in your search query on mobile devices, the search suggestions are now based on your phone’s current or last known location. Ideally this will improve the relevancy of those suggested results by optimizing them based on where you are.
In order to take advantage of the new feature, you’ll have to turn on “Save recent locations” and “Allow use of device location” under the Settings link on the google.com home page. You may also have to refresh the google.com page on your phone’s browser in order to see the location-optimized suggestions.
It’s another step in Google’s march into local territory. Anyone have predictions on what will be next?
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MobileMe Gallery For iPhone Appears in the App Store
Jan 15th
You can flip through your existing photos in typical iPhone finger-gesture fashion or take new ones with your phone and upload them to the MobileMe cloud. There’s an option to send photos both new and old to friends and colleagues via e-mail, and the app views videos, too.
You can also use MobileMe Gallery to browse friends’ photos; any friend you’re following will have a blue dot next to his or her name when he or she has uploaded new photos. Chances are you’re sharing your photos on
As is the case with many other Apple products, design is prominent; there’s a sliding ticker of recent photos at the top of the app to give it some extra style. If you want to see how it works firsthand before downloading it, there’s a quick tour video over at
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SCUM: Haiti Disaster Attracts Hoaxes and Scammers
Jan 14th
Going even farther down the scumbag rabbit hole,
This shouldn’t deter you from donating to Haiti relief — but it should warn you to take extra precautions to make sure you’re giving to a legitimate source. The
If you’ve identified any shady donation sources, please let us know in the comments.
[img credit:
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Oneforty Launches E-Commerce Platform
Jan 14th
Developer and Community Focused
I spoke with Oneforty’s CEO, Laura Fitton (
On that end, the revenue split for Oneforty’s e-commerce platform is pretty fair. The minimum price is $0.99 and Oneforty gets a 25 percent commission. For more expensive apps ($14.50 and above), Oneforty will take a smaller cut. When you consider how much transaction fees can cost a developer, having that taken care of, plus having the exposure to the Oneforty community, is pretty cool.
Getting Started
At the bottom of the Oneforty homepage is a “Are you a Developer?” link. Developers can click that, register as a developer and then start the process of playing with the API to set up payments.
Developers can set a price and Oneforty will show them how much revenue they can expect to get from each sale at that price. Sellers also have a easy way of looking to see how much revenue they have collected from Oneforty. Today’s rollout is being called an alpha test, so if support issues do arise, devs can use the ZenDesk support form, Oneforty’s IRC channel (#oneforty on freenode) or even call CEO Laura Fitton directly on her cell phone.
Oneforty Is Growing
In addition to rolling out the e-commerce platform, Oneforty has also confirmed that it has closed a $1.85M Series A funding round, led by Flybridge Capital Partners. The idea of a
Oneforty says it will use the funding to make some new hires and accelerate platform development.
Have you used Oneforty? If you’re a developer, how do you currently sell your products? Let us know!
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RUMOR: New iPhone Will Have a Better Camera, Sensitive Back
Jan 14th
According to Goldman Sachs’ Robert Chen, it
Specifically, this might mean a better camera (which is a very safe bet as far as predictions go), but also a sensitive back case, similar to the touch panel used for the Magic Mouse. A couple of days ago, Motorola introduced the
Apple, of course, doesn’t comment on “rumors and speculation.” But according to Chen, the new iPhone will go into production in April and should be available to consumers in June or July — just enough time for the rumor train to go into full speed.
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Nexus One Sales: Will They Be More Like Avatar or Gigli?
Jan 14th
Yet now we’ve learned that
From this point on, I suggest that Nexus One sales will mimic the sales of one of two movies: the James Cameron blockbuster Avatar or the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez box office bomb Gigli.
The Gigli Scenario
Gigli had a budget of $54 million, much of which was used to pay for the salaries of Affleck, Lopez and Al Pacino. During its first weekend, though, the movie grossed less than $4 million, an utter bomb. It’s now considered by many as one of the biggest box office bombs of all time (as well as being a terrible, terrible movie).
In the Gigli scenario, the Nexus One would continue to sell badly, never really breaking 20,000 units sold per week. Sure, eventually there might be a few hundred thousand on the market, but Google’s phone wouldn’t come anywhere near the sales of the iPhone or the Droid. More importantly, Google wouldn’t recuperate its cost and its reputation would be tarnished.
At least
The Avatar Effect
Avatar started out with a bang on its
In the Avatar scenario, the Nexus One benefits from positive buzz, happy customers and word-of-mouth marketing. Its sales either stay consistent or rise as more and more people experience their friends’ Google phones. Another bump occurs when the device hits the Nexus One. The end result would eventually be a launch that beat the
Which Scenario Is More Likely?
I’ve presented two potential outcomes for Nexus One sales, but as with most things in life, the answer lies in the middle. The Nexus One won’t bomb; it’s too good of a phone for that to happen. What’s more likely is that people will slowly become more comfortable with the online sales model Google is pioneering with its self-branded phone and will eventually purchase it after playing around with a friend’s phone or hearing enough about it.
Will the Nexus One beat the Droid? Probably not. The Droid just has a lot more marketing muscle behind it. Yet it’s not the Nexus One that will likely be Google’s star device, but the Nexus Two and whatever phones it releases in the product line.
Google is making a long-term investment in Android and in changing the business model of choosing a carrier first and a business model second. As it hones in on the perfect phone and more people get comfortable with
Eventually, the Nexus line will reach Avatar levels, only second to the iPhone. We’re not worried about the long-term prospects of the Google Phone.
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Has the App Store Really Lost $450 Million to Piracy?
Jan 13th
The website
Mobile App Piracy: A Quick Primer
As iPhone detractors are always keen to point out, mobile applications, and, in turn, mobile application piracy, is not a new issue. The Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms have been battling the problem for the better part of a decade, and the Palm Classic- and JDK-compatible platforms even longer than that.
However, with the big push to acquire newer smartphone platforms like the
In February of last year,
Lest you think this phenomenon is just limited to the iPhone, Android app developers have been complaining about the
The bottom line is that this is a real issue and it does impact developers, which in turn impacts the development ecosystem as a whole, including users. But how big is the problem?
The Report
24/7 Wall St. is claiming $450 million has been lost to piracy in the iTunes App Store alone, but we have some very real problems with the way that figure was determined.
The biggest red flag is that 24/7 Wall St. assumes that paid iPhone applications have a piracy rate of 75 percent. How did they come to this conclusion? Using some past piracy usage examples from apps
Now, this might be true for games like iCombat and others from Fishlabs — but this certainly isn’t going to be the case across the board. It might be more fair to say that the piracy rate for games in the App Store is 75 percent, but even then you would need a much larger sample size and various tracking methods if you wanted to be accurate.
Additionally, 24/7 Wall St. is estimating that 17 percent of the 3 billion apps downloaded from the App Store were paid apps — or 510 million. They then multiply that by three (using the previous ratio) and assume that 1.53 billion apps have been pirated. Then, the report multiples that figure by $3 (the average price of a paid app) and gets $4.59 billion. Assuming that 10 percent of app pirates would have actually purchased the app in question, that’s how you get $459 million in lost revenue.
I’m not a statistician, but even I can see that that’s really, really reaching.
Over-inflating Figures Doesn’t Help
Here’s the biggest problem I have with throwing around figures like “$450 million lost in piracy” — it doesn’t help the situation at all. Most people take piracy statistics with a grain of salt, anyway, and when they dissect the nature in which those figures were calculated, are more likely to write-off the entire issue. That certainly doesn’t help the game developer who sees that X percent of her usage statistics are coming form people who didn’t even pay for the app.
Instead of inflating figures, why not talk about what could be done to help curb (not solve, you can’t solve piracy in the digital age) the problem?
Both
Because Apple so tightly controls its developer ecosystem, developers are in a sense beholden to Apple to make sure that the encryption linking apps to specific devices is stronger. Because only jailbroken phones can use cracked apps, an obvious solution would be making the devices harder to jailbreak. That’s easier said than done, of course, but the fact remains that the onus really shouldn’t be on developers who have no control over how to sell their apps and have limited options in securing them.
What do you think about this report and mobile app piracy in general?
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