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I'm in Berlin today presenting the result the results of the "Android appstore competition" at Droidcamp part of the Droidcon.

What's the "Android appstore competition" ?

Simple!!! You take the coolest app on the planet, place it on 10 different Android appstores, compare the results and vote live for the winner!

The WIP Appstore wiki app developed by Friedger Mueffke at Open Intents.

(For experimentation perspective, we will not provide a link to the application but you can find in an Android appstore near you... and I'm sure someone will post a link to it in the comments soon

The facts

The selected criteria:

• Time to load :
  1. 1 Androidpit
  2. 2 Appoke
  3. 3 Hanster - PDAssi

• Number of fields to fill in:
  1. 1 Appoke
  2. 2 AndroidPIT - GetJar
  3. 3 PLAYNOW - Handster

• Number of uploads needed:
  1. 1 PDAssi
  2. 2 GetJar
  3. 3 Android Market - Handster

• Time to market:
  1. 1 Android...

I had a chance to connect with Ojas Rege from MobileIron, a company behind one of the first enterprise app stores featured in the WIP App Store Wiki. While app stores are largely seen as a consumer-driven phenomenon, there's a lot of action growing around them in the enterprise space, too. Enterprises bring their own special set of needs and desires to app stores that are completely different from those of general consumers, and we'll be exploring this space in detail at our upcoming WIPJam at IT-Profits in Berlin on June 9.

Who is MobileIron?

MobileIron was created in 2007 and for a while went around asking enterprises about their needs around mobile. It quickly emerged that the smartphone was becoming more like a computer in terms of the activities, applications and data that was consumed and stored on the device, but with a significant exception: most phones are roaming outside the enterprise boundaries most of the time, and often do not belong to the enterprise directly, but...

I was up in San Francisco earlier this week for the Google I/O event, and as expected, Android played a big part in the proceedings. A number of big announcements involving the platform were made, and it was also interesting to see that at the I/O Developer Sandbox (the closest thing the event has to an expo floor), the section showing off Android tools, services and devices was bigger than any of the others focused on other Google areas of interest.

There were three big pieces of Android news:

• Version 2.2 of the platform, named Froyo, was formally announced. Many of the features of 2.2 had been going around the web for a few weeks, but this was its formal introduction. Engadget has a good rundown of all the new features, including Flash support in the browser, the ability to store apps on external memory. Froyo also supports tethering and mobile hotspot services, and is significantly faster, both in UI and the browser, than earlier versions. It should be available for the...

I'm heading up to San Francisco this week to go to the MOTOBOWL 2010 event that MOTODEV is running alongside Google I/O Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Yerba Buena Bowling Alley in San Francisco. I'll be there Wednesday night representing WIP and giving away some killer prizes, so come and join us for some bowling, fun, food and more to learn about how MOTODEV supports Android developers!

Here are some more details from Motorola:

Join us at the first annual MOTOBOWL 2010 - May 18th and 19th 7pm-10pm at the Yerba Buena Bowling Alley (across from the Moscone Center). Test your bowling skills while learning how working with us and MOTODEV can help you develop and distribute great Android applications for Motorola handsets. Compete against other Android developers in various challenges and get a chance to win prizes from Motorola & MOTODEV Fast Track Partners.  Coming to the event on both nights will get you more opportunity to win prizes and be awarded the top Android...

James Cooper has this week's Carnival of the Mobilists up over at Mobyaffilliates, where you can find the best mobile blog posts from the last week. Included is our post on the recent Blackberry WES 2010 event, while others cover mobile advertising, the mobile Web, Android and more! Be sure to check it out.

Calling Canadian MobileDevelopers - Join a GSMA OneAPI Hack-a-thon

The GSMA has put together a global initiative called OneAPI.  It's all about network APIs and making it easier for application developers to work with the operators - you only develop to OneAPI, have one set of T&Cs and get access to multiple carriers. 

The first pilot is in Canada, with Bell, Rogersand TELUS! And the first APIs open are messaging, location and operator billing.   We need YOU, the developers, to work it, play with it and tell us WHAT YOU THINK!  Other international operators will follow shortly.  So get in on the ground floor now!

Join us for a briefing session and stay to hack-a-thon with refreshments and prizes.

Sign up on the WIP website for a Hack-a-thon in these cities:

- Montreal:       Thursday, May 13

- Ottawa:          Monday, May 17

- Toronto:         Tuesday, May 18

- Vancouver:    Thursday, May 20

http://www.wipconnector.com/wipjam/oneapi

OR  Get started right away,...

Vodafone UK announced this week that it was making a significant change to its unlimited data plans, and will now begin charging users if they go over 500MB of traffic in a month. This comes after operators like AT&T and Verizon in the US have talked about seeing the industry shift to usage-based data pricing from flat-rate or unlimited plans. These sorts of stories might not seem all that important for mobile developers, but they're worth paying attention to.

Undoubtedly one of the industry trends that sowed the seeds of the current boom in mobile data use and app downloads was the spread of affordable flat-rate data plans. No matter what the actual financial cost of usage-based pricing plans, they carry a significant mental transaction cost for users, where they're constantly trying to decide if a link is worth clicking on, or something's worth downloading, because they're being charged for it. By setting data usage at an easily understood flat monthly rate, that transaction...

Terry Hughes, president and CMO of Widality, developers of the BlackBerry business app Momentem, sent us this report from RIM's recent WES 2010 event in Florida. If you'd like to report on a mobile event you're attending and have your report and company featured on the WIP blog, send me an email at carlo at wipconnector dot com! Thanks Terry (celebrating the 100,000th registered user of
Momentem live at WES), and take it away!

As the developer of a B2B app / service exclusively available for BlackBerry users, I wanted to share my thoughts on WES and on RIM’s strategy too.

Although BlackBerry is way more of a consumer-focused company than ever before (as witnessed by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas doing a keynote!), much of the emphasis was on good old fashioned things like B2B solutions, the needs of the enterprise for mobility, and making money -- yes, making money isn’t a dirty word after all!

RIM appeared assertive and confident, partly because they had made it into the...

The May edition of the WIP App Store Report is now available for download. The WIP App Store Wiki now lists 75 stores, up from 68 in April. The new entrants included:

• AndroidAppShop
• R-World
• TomTom App Store
• LePhone App Store
• Softwareload
• android.pdassi.de

The announcement of the TomTom App Store, which will sell apps for the company's new PNDs running a WebKit-based platform, brought up an interesting trend: we're starting to see more and more App Stores for devices that aren't phones (at least not in the traditional sense), but are open to mobile developers. For example, there's AutoLinQ from car parts maker Continental. The company is working on an in-car computing system that will run Android, and it will eventually open the system up for outside developers. Android's being used in several different ways beyond phones, including on web tablets and even televisions.

We decided to take a look at the App Stores we're tracking the wiki by the type of...

The latest installment of the Carnival of the Mobilists is up at Volker on Mobile. Be sure to check it out for the week's best blogging on mobile. This week, Volker features some great posts, covering:

• - Whether the decline of fixed-line telecom networks is bad for mobile
• - App store marketing
• - Whether Apple needs an enterprise version of the iPhone
• - Mobile marketing
• - Mobile affiliate programs
• - and more!