Today Google announced (in several places) that the Android Market is being rebranded “Google Play”
The new marketplace (sorry, “play store”) includes content from four main areas – Movies, Music, Apps & Games, and Books. Of course, not all of these are available outside of the US yet, so folks in Australia will only get access to Apps & Games and Books for now. READ MORE »
You know all those “Win an iPad” competitions that seem to be so prolific throughout online advertising? I’ve seen so many of these competitions that at some point I just stopped paying attention, let alone entering the contest. I never knew anyone who actually won an iPad, so what’s the point of entering?
Well just last month, I saw my mobile ISP, Amaysim, was running a competition where you could win an iPad, and a 10GB mobile data pack. It caught my attention, since it was only available to people who had liked their Facebook page. Being a local Aussie company, there weren’t many people who fit this criteria. I might be in for a chance. READ MORE »
Steve Jobs: 1955-2011
Wow. Today the technology industry farewells one of the greatest visionaries we’ve ever seen. Apple has confirmed that Steve Jobs, ex-CEO of Apple, passed away today:
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.
Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
I can say “Amen” to that. No matter which side of the smartphone wars you come from, it’s impossible to deny that Apple has come a long way since Steve took over as CEO again. The company he created has almost single-handedly shaped the smartphone, tablet & MP3 player industries during the past decade. Apple, under Steve Jobs, has established the benchmark of simple, elegant products and created a unique identity in the technology arena.
The Apple homepage currently shows a large photo of Steve Jobs, with the text
Steve Jobs
1955-2011
Simple, and elegant.
Rest In Peace, Steve Jobs.
Ok, so maybe the title’s just a little bit of a linkbait. 
But I got a very strong sense of déjà vu when I woke up this morning and first read the specs for the new iPhone 4S. Dual-core processor, 8MP camera, world phone…. hang on a sec, that’s describing my phone! My Samsung Galaxy S II that is. The one I’ve had in my pocket for months already.
This feeling of “been there, done that” only increased when I read on further to the details of iOS 5 (A̶n̶d̶r̶o̶i̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶y̶l̶e̶ improved notifications, anyone?) When the iPhone 4 was announced, it seemed to blow away all the competition. It was simply better than anything else out there. But I can hardly say the same about yesterday’s announcement. In my opinion, it was the most unimpressive iPhone release yet. Sure, the iPhone 4S is obviously an incremental upgrade to the iPhone 4. And many of the improvements are welcome. But they’re also long overdue – and suspiciously familiar to long-time Android users. READ MORE »
This is the first in a series of posts I’ll be writing, to highlight some of the most important Android news from the past week. Hopefully it’ll be a useful summary, and also provide some incentive for me to keep the posts coming 
Enjoy!
Transdroid, the popular torrent client for Android is the latest app to incur Google’s wrath, as it was pulled from the Android Market earlier this week. This news seemed to slip under the radar in the wake of the Google+ launch. Still no word on why. Perhaps George Lucas noticed the word “droid”?
Andy Rubin revealed in a tweet that Google is now activating over 500,000 new Android devices per day, and that this figure is growing by 4.4% week over week. This is a big step up from 300,000 late last year. Just think about it – that’s more than 15 million new Android devices each month. And that’s not even counting the unofficial forks. READ MORE »
Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to submit one of my articles to Hacker News. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it, due to my previous experience with sites like Digg and Reddit. Well, I was wrong. The article hit the front page of HN within minutes, and stayed there for over 10 hours. By the end of the day (Australian time), this website had handled over 7,000 visitors – which is about 6,500 more than a normal day.
Today, the same article has been featured on Reddit, Twitter and The Next Web, resulting in another 20,000 visits so far. All that exposure has resulting in some very interesting comments from Android and iOS developers alike. I’ve previously been writing for a fairly small audience, it’s a bit of a different experience to get critical review from all over the web. So what have I learned? Two things – that WordPress scales well with caching, and that there’s always someone with a different point of view. READ MORE »
The developer of ProPassword (for iOS devices) has posted an interesting testimony on his blog. He released the app for free, relying on Apple’s advertising platform, iAd as the sole source of revenue. Over 15,000 downloads later, this developer decides that ad-supported free apps just aren’t a reliable revenue source. READ MORE »
Yet another success story from Apple’s App Store. The Heist is a new game for the iPhone from the creators of Camera+. I wrote about these guys previously – they certainly know how to make good apps. Until recently, Angry Birds was the uncontested best seller on the App Store. However, for the past 3 days it has been ousted by The Heist, which now occupies the #1 position for daily downloads. In just half a day, the app was downloaded 25,233 times. How much revenue is that? READ MORE »
Distimo has released their latest report on the state of mobile app stores. There are some very interesting figures released, particularly relating to Google’s Android Marketplace.
READ MORE »
The developer of Camera+ (for iOS devices) recently announced that their app has hit 2 million sales. This figure is a huge success, both numerically and financially. To celebrate this milestone, the developers have decided to share some of their stats publicly, including overall sales volume and revenue from in-app purchases.
One of the most interesting revelations in the blog post is the upgrade numbers. Over half of the people who had downloaded Camera+ also upgraded to the latest version when it was released. This indicates a high level of user engagement – users did not simply “download and discard” which is a common situation in the mobile app world.
Another noteworthy observation: revenue from in-app purchases was relatively low, compared with overall app purchases from the App Store. Only 98,000 in-app effects were sold in total – compared with 2,000,000 app purchases. At $0.99 each, these in-app purchases added up to a tiny part of the overall app revenue.
This is significant for any developers looking to make money from in-app purchases on Android. The target market for Android and iOS developers is relatively similar, so you can expect similar results in publishing an app to the Android Market. Referring to the use of in-app purchases as a primary revenue model, the Camera+ developers concluded:
it’s very unlikely that this can be an effective business model
So there you have it – in-app products might be useful to give a welcome boost to your revenue, but don’t base your entire business model around them. Better to stick with the tried and tested methods – paid apps, ad-supported, and “freemium”.
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