1)59% of the Top Grossing Apps in the whole of 2011 were Free
Nicholas Lovell
Tweet I think that the data points about whether free works are becoming very clear。
In 2011, across the whole Appstore, 59% of the top grossing apps (not games, but all apps) were free。
Last time I did this analysis – a snapshot in November 2010 – the figure was 34%。
The charts below show the price points and genres of the top 101 games on the AppStore, according to Apple’s Rewind feature. Cast your eye down the list to see which products *really* know how to make money on the AppStore。(source:gamesbrief)
2)Sunday Is The Best Day To Launch Your Mobile App
Sarah Perez
According to new research from mobile analytics service Mobilewalla, Sunday is the best day to release a mobile app, but Wednesday is the most popular day among developers. The company studied the apps released in the iTunes App Store and Android Market over a 17-week period between May 16th and September 8th, 2011, to determine its findings. During this time, there were 91,754 iOS apps released into the iTunes App Store and 122,220 apps released into the Android Market。
Yes, that’s a lot of apps! The company reported earlier in December that the app count rose to 987,863 across all four platforms (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone) and is now growing at an average of 2,000 apps per day. In the last 12 months, iOS apps grew from 338,000 to 589,148. Android apps grew from 115,000 to 319,774.
During the 119 days of the study, Mobilewalla sorted apps by the day of the week they were released. However, it should be noted that on Android, developers control the release date, while iOS apps’ release dates are affected by the iTunes review cycle. So it may not be fair to proclaim Wednesday as developer’s “favorite” day universally, given that they’re not always in control of the release timeframe。
Even if Sunday was not always the developers’ chosen launch day, Mobilewalla found that apps released then statistically performed the best. That is, they made it into the list of the top 240 mobile applications. In this case, Mobilewalls is defining the “top 240″ apps as those that achieve the highest ranking in their respective stores. 42% of the iOS apps released on a Sunday made it into the top 240, while 11% of Android apps did the same。
Meanwhile, Thursdays were the worst day to release apps on Android, as only 7% of apps reached the top 240 then. On iOS, Fridays were the worst, as only 10% of apps reached the top 240.
Although unrelated to trends regarding the best and worst days of the week to launch, the company stumbled upon a relatively sad finding during its research: an app on Apple’s platform is four times more likely to be discovered than an app on the Android Market. That speaks to the challenges Google still has to overcome in terms of its ability to better showcase the best new apps within its app store, perhaps。
Explains Anindya Datta, Ph.D., founder and chairman of Mobilewalla, “Apple users discover apps more conveniently than Android users. And while it is impossible to identify exact causes for this pattern, users may find it easier to browse items in the relatively low number of apps launched over the weekend。”(source:techcrunch)
3)Apple’s App Store alone worth more than RIM
By Darrell Etherington
Apple’s App Store alone is worth more than all of Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry devices. That’s according to a bit of quick-thinking analysis by writer and smartphone market analyst Brian S. Hall (via Twitter)， who noted on his blog that at its share price Monday morning, RIM is worth roughly $7.04 billion, while the App Store is probably worth about $7.08 billion。
Trefis analysis of Apple’s value broken down by category
Hall’s analysis is based on RIM’s stock price of $13.44, its closing price as of Friday on the NYSE, and analysis by Trefis that says Apple’s App Store is responsible for about 2 percent of Apple’s market cap. Taking Apple’s current market cap of $354 billion and doing the math, Hall arrived at the $7.08 billion number。
Apps are the lifeblood of mobile ecosystems, as is becoming apparent by the domination of the smartphone market by iOS and Android devices, which have the strongest software libraries by far of any mobile platform. There is no better way to encapsulate what being behind in the app race means for a mobile company than Hall’s snapshot comparison of one company near its lowest point, with a single subcategory of another in its prime。(source:gigaom)
4)86 per cent of smartphone users ignore mobile ads
by Zen Terrelonge
That, and more found in YouGov’s 2012 consumer tech predictions。
The online market researcher says 40 per cent of Britons own smartphones, which is set to rise to 68 per cent with the next device upgrade cycle。
Despite this large share of the mobile space, marketers are in danger of failing with their campaigns, according to the report. More than three quarters ignore mobile advertising completely and 79 per cent describe the method as irritating。
Worrying figures, which show a significant need for ad firms to up their game in order to turn around the opinion。
The report says that indoor smartphone use for interaction with TVs and heating systems will grow, in addition to service use for location-based marketing and QR codes。
Further results show that tablet popularity is on the rise too, with 24 per cent surfing the web in bed with their device。
Russell Feldman, associate director of technology at YouGov, said: “The decline of print media sales will only accelerate during 2012. Tablets and apps will increase the digital cannibalisation of paper copies as they erode more of those previously inaccessible locations to digital devices; for example, nearly one quarter of tablet users access the internet whilst in bed。”
Although tablet adoption in the UK is only at four per cent , YouGov predicts the number will grow as a result of digital magazine consumption and that newspapers and publishers will concentrate more on tablet platforms。(source:mobile-ent)
5)Media Tablet Shipments Miss Third Quarter Targets, But New Entrants and Holiday Demand Will Spark Fourth Quarter Growth, According to IDC
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., December 15, 2011 – Worldwide media tablet shipments into sales channels rose by 23.9% on a sequential basis in the third calendar quarter of 2011 (3Q11) to 18.1 million units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker. That represents an increase of 264.5% from the same quarter last year, but 5.8% below the original forecast of 19.2 million units. Despite these slightly lower-than-expected shipments in 3Q11, IDC sees strong demand in 4Q11 and has increased its worldwide shipment forecast for 2011 to 63.3 million units, up from a previous projection of 62.5 million units。
Apple continued to drive worldwide media tablet shipments in 3Q11. The company shipped 11.1 million units in 3Q11, up from 9.3 million units in 2Q11. That represents a 61.5% worldwide market share (down from 63.3% in 2Q11). HP entered and left the market in 3Q11 with its TouchPad product. The company shipped 903,354 units to grab a 5% share of the worldwide market, number three behind Samsung’s 5.6% market share. After IDC updated its taxonomy to move LCD-based devices such as Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color into the media tablet category, Barnes & Noble shipped 805,458 units to achieve the number four spot with a 4.5% market share. ASUS rounded out the top five with a 4% share。
After ceding share in 3Q11 (down to 32.4% from 33.2% the previous quarter)， IDC expects Android to make dramatic share gains in 4Q11 growing to 40.3%. That increase is due mostly to the entrance of Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and to a lesser extent the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, into the market. The share increase comes at the expense of Blackberry (slipping from 1.1% to 0.7%)， iOS (slipping from 61.5% to 59.0%)， and webOS (slipping from 5% to 0%). Despite HP’s announcement last week that it would contribute webOS to the Open Source community, IDC does not believe the operating system will reappear in the media tablet market in any meaningful way going forward。
“Amazon and Barnes & Noble are shaking up the media tablet market, and their success helps prove that there is an appetite for media tablets beyond Apple’s iPad,” said Tom Mainelli, research director, Mobile Connected Devices. “That said, I fully expect Apple to have its best-ever quarter in 4Q11, and in 2012 I think we’ll see Apple’s product begin to gain more traction outside of the consumer market, specifically with enterprise and education markets。” (source:idc)
6)Google is making its own tablet, and in 6 months you can buy it
Jolie O’Dell
Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced in an interview today that the company was looking to launch its own tablet within the next six months。
In a conversation with Italian publication Carriere Della Sera, Schmidt spoke briefly about the iPad and revealed, “In the next six months, we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality。”
While Apple has vigorously prosecuted manufacturers such as Samsung for its allegedy copycat tablet design — and while Steve Jobs spoke strongly before his death about how he considered Android a work of theft — Schmidt chalked it all up to business and competition。
“In mobile communications, the smartphone market, you will see brutal competition between Apple and Google Android. It is capitalism,” he said。
We’re waiting for official confirmation from Google about the meaning of Schmidt’s words. Google might be rolling out a new type of tablet with a manufacturer partner as part of its familiar lead-device strategy for new Android operating systems. Or, the company might actually be bringing a Nexus-like tablet to market itself under the Google brand name。
One thing is certain, however: Whatever product Schmidt is talking about will be running Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich and will likely show off the most impressive features of that operating system. Currently, few Ice Cream Sandwich tablets are available, even for pre-order。
For now, Android tablets in general make up an exciting but still small portion of the tablet market, where they face stiff competition from the likes of Apple’s iPad. As of August 2011, Android tablets had wrested 20 percent of the tablet market share away from Apple。(source:venturebeat)
7)Mobile social media users to hit 1.3bn in 2016
by Zen Terrelonge
Up from 650m this year。
UK-based analyst Juniper Research says the rise of mobile social media users will be powered by the continued growth of those adopting smartphones and geosocial network use。
The 1.3 billion mobile social network users expected for 2016 is more than all of the users across every platform today, according to the report。
The integration of location-based tech into social media has proven to be popular, as platforms like Foursquare occupy the whereabouts of more than 15 million users。
The report says the union of social, local and mobile tech has bloomed because people don’t just want to know what their friends are doing, but also where and what other activities are in the area。(source:mobile-ent)