Stanford Graduates Release Pulse, A Must-Have News App For The iPad June 1, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Apple, Apps, iPad, Mobile Application, RSS
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Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta, two Stanford grads who signed up for the Launch Pad class at the University’s Institute of Design (aka d.school), could have hardly chosen a better path to try their hands at startup life. The pair has gone from idea to a (very cool) digital news app for the iPad in just 5 weeks, and they’re just getting started.
The application, called Pulse, is essentially a visually attractive RSS-based news aggregator. On sale for $3.99 (iTunes link), the app is aimed to please both hardcore RSS reader users and people who are willing to pay top dollars for single publication apps.
via Stanford Graduates Release Pulse, A Must-Have News App For The iPad.
Knocking lets you share live video between iPhones and Android smartphones | VentureBeat March 24, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Android, App Store, Apple, Google, iPhone, Mobile Application
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Knocking Live Video, which allows you to send live video footage from your phone’s camera to another phone, is one of the coolest iPhone apps I’ve seen recently. And today it’s launching for phones using Google’s Android operating system.
via Knocking lets you share live video between iPhones and Android smartphones | VentureBeat.
Demolition Derby in Devices: The roller-coaster ride is on | VisionMobile :: blog March 13, 2010
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Android, Apple, Google, iPhone, Market, Market Trends, Mobile, Mobile Application
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[The economic realities will lead to a roller-coaster ride that will shake up the mobile industry. Guest blogger Richard Kramer talks about the impending price war, the implications for industry growth, and how this will alter the landscape of device vendors in the next decade]
With all the discussion of technology trends on the blogosphere, there are some harsh economic realities creeping up on the handset space. The collective efforts of vendors to deliver great products will lead to an all-out smash-up for market share, bringing steep declines in pricing.
In November 2009 I wrote a note about what Arete saw as the impending dynamics of the mobile device market. I called it Demolition Derby. This followed on from a piece called Clash of the Titans, about how the PC and Handset worlds were colliding, brought together by common software platforms and adopting common chipset architectures. As handsets morphed into connected devices, it opened the door for computing industry players, now flooding in.
New categories of non-phone devices
A USB modem/datacard market of 70m units in 2009 should counted as an extra third of the smartphone market, as it connected a range of computing devices. By the end of 2010, I believe there will be many new categories of non-phone mobile devices to track (datacards, embedded PCs, tablets, etc.), and they may be equal to high-end smartphone market in units in 2011. Having looked at the roadmaps of nearly every established and wannabe vendor in the mobile device space, I cannot recall a period in the past 15 years of covering the device market with so many credible vendors, most with their best product portfolios ever, tossing their hats in the ring. I see three things happening because of this:
1. First, a brutal price war is coming. This will affect nearly every segment of the mobile device market. Anyone who thinks they are insulated from this price war is simply deluded. I have lost count of the number of vendors planning to offer a touch-screen slim mono-bloc Android device for H2 2010. The only thing that will set all these devices apart will be brand, and in the end, price. Chipmakers – the canaries in the handset coal mine – are already talking about slim HSPA modems at $10 price points, and $20 combined application processors and RF. Both Huawei and ZTE now targeting Top Three positions in devices, with deep engagements developing operator brands. They are already #1 and #2 in USB modems. Just look at the pricing trends ZTE and Huawei brought to the infrastructure market; this will come to mobile devices.
2. Second, growth will rebound with a vengeance. I expect 15% volume growth in 2010, well ahead of the cautious consensus of 8%. I first noted this failure of vision in forecasting in a 2005 note entitled “A Billion Handsets in 2007” when the consensus was looking for 6% growth whereas we got 20%+ growth for three years, thanks to the onset of $25 BoM devices. Consumers will not care about software platform debates or feature creep packing devices with GHz processors in 2010. Ask your friends who don’t read mobile blogs and aren’t hung up about AppStores or tear-downs: they will simply respond to an impossibly wide choice of impossibly great devices, offered to them at impossibly cheap prices.
3. Third, the detente is over. The long-term stability that alllowed the top five vendors to command 80% market share for most of this decade is breaking down. This is not simply a question of “Motorola fades, Samsung steps in” or “LG replaces SonyEricsson in the featurephone space”. Within a year, there could be dangerously steep market share declines among the former market leaders (i.e. Nokia) to accompany their decline in value share. Operators are grasping control of the handset value chain; many intend to follow the lead of Vodafone 360 to develop their own range of mid-tier and low-end devices. Whether or not this delivers better user experiences, operators are determined to target their subsidy spend to their favourite ODM partners. In developed markets, long-established vendors are getting eclipsed: in 2010, RIM or Apple could pass traditional vendors like SonyEricsson or Motorola in units. RIM and Apple already handily out-paced older rivals in sales value, and with $41bn of estimated sales in 2010, are on par with Nokia.
Hyper competition
So where does this lead us? Even with far greater volumes than anyone dares to imagine, there is no way to satisfy everyone’s hopes of share gains, or profits. With Apple driving to $25bn in 2010 sales and Mediatek-based customers seeking share in emerging markets, the mobile device market is entering a phase of hyper-competition. It is all too easy for industry pundits to forget that Motorola and Sony Ericsson collectively lost over $5bn in the past 2.5 years. More such losses are to come.
Never before have we seen so many vendors acting individually rationally, but collectively insane. Albert Einstein once famously said that “the defintiion of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result”.
The men in the white coats will have a field day with the mobile device market in 2010.
– Richard
via Demolition Derby in Devices: The roller-coaster ride is on | VisionMobile :: blog.
Million-Dollar Apps – BusinessWeek October 24, 2009
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: App Store, Apple, iPhone, Market Trends, Mobile, Mobile Application
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In the course of reporting my feature story on apps for the Web and mobile phones, I asked developers how much money these little pieces of software are actually bringing in. While they are certainly the exception in the sea of 80,000 programs on Apple’s App Store, I found several apps that have racked up sales of $1 million or more. Here they are:
Enigmo
Sales: $2.5 million
Company: Pangea Software
F.A.S.T.
Sales: $1.8 million
Company: Social Gaming Network
Ocarina
Sales: $1.3 million
Company: Smule
I Am T-Pain
Sales: $1.1 million
Company: Smule
Roller-Coaster Rush
Sales: $1.1 million
Company: Digital Chocolate
Flick Fishing
Sales: $1 million
Company: Freeverse
Ragdoll Blaster
Sales: $950,000
Company: Backflip Studios
Currently, the lion’s share of app revenues come from the upfront fees paid by users upon download. But many developers see much bigger potential with in-app purchases, such as the extra songs you can buy after you download Smule’s I Am T-Pain.
Apple recently lit a fire under this opportunity by making it possible for companies to offer in-app purchases within free programs. Kleiner Perkins-backed game maker ngmoco plans to give away the first level or portion of all its games and charge users to keep playing.
Dropbox Meets The iPhone; Access Files On The Go October 5, 2009
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: Apple, Dropbox, iPhone, Mobile, Mobile Application
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Dropbox, the easy to use file access manager which syncs your files across all your computers and the web, has introduced an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. After almost 7 weeks of waiting, Apple has finally approved the application. With this new iPhone app, users will get access to all their Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your ‘Favorites’, they’ll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud.
One of Dropbox’s core features is sharing your files and folders stored in the cloud with anyone else who has a Dropbox account, and the iPhone is no exception. Users can easily share their Dropbox files and folders from their iPhone to any other Dropbox user by putting in their email address, just like on the web. The app allows users to upload photos for 3G users, and videos if you have an iPhone 3GS.
What’s really cool about Dropbox’s iPhone app is that you can even stream music and movies from your Dropbox straight to your iPhone, without any noticeable delay. Dropbox’s app is also heavily integrated into Apple’s camera API with straight photo and video uploading available too.
Just a few days ago, Dropbox reached 2 million users. Dropbox was a finalist at the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference.
Creating A Hit IPhone Game September 26, 2009
Posted by hruf in Mobile & Gadgets.Tags: App Store, Apple, iPhone, Mobile Application
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BURLINGAME, Calif. — David Whatley’s fast-paced action-strategy game “geoDefense Swarm” is the latest to top the iPhone App Store.
Priced at 99 cents, “Swarm,” which was released Sept. 14, is currently No. 1 in the Top Paid Apps Games genre, beating out “Madden NFL 10.” “Swarm” is also No. 3 in Top Paid Apps overall.
Whatley says the “ultimate secret” to getting to the top in the App Store is getting Apple ( AAPL – news – people ) to notice your product and promote it in categories like “What’s Hot” and “What We’re Playing.” This kind of attention drives tons of traffic to your app, he says. But it is near impossible to engage the infamously closed-off company directly, especially with many new titles coming through every day. Instead, he says, developers need to be able to successfully generate buzz around the blogosphere and on online message boards to pique Apple’s interest.
Whatley says PR firm TriplePoint was key to sparking interest in the original “geoDefense,” which was released last February, and now “Swarm.” “For an indie developer to be successful, you have to do more than write code. You have to figure out how to get the word out about your game,” says Whatley, who does game development in his spare time. His day job is president and chief executive of Simutronics, a company he co-founded over 20 years ago that creates game engine software for publishers like Electronic Arts ( ERTS – news – people ).