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This weeks carnival is brought to us by Tamoggemon Content Network. As usual, there are many great blogs highlighted. These include: An App Store Analysis by Chetam Sharma, arjw pens a view to the future on Why Paypal on mobile devices may replace Credit Cards, and a guest blogger on WIP Connector, Jennifer Byrne, discussing how Verizon is Investing in Developers.
Our guest blogger this week is Jennifer Byrne, Director of Business Development and Partner Management at Verizon Wireless. Verizon Wireless is a sponsor of our WIPJam Day for Developers, taking place on March 22, 2010 at CTIA. Jennifer is leading a discussion group on Monday afternoon at WIPJam.
Verizon - Investing in Developers
Verizon is a proud sponsor of WIPJam 2010 at CTIA, and is interested in investing in the resources and partnerships that help developers grow their business. That is why we are so happy to take this opportunity to announce that you can now expand your market and reach an even larger user base through our V CAST Apps store. That’s because V CAST Apps will soon be available on Android devices, our fastest-growing smartphone platform. It will provide an easy, streamlined experience for users to find and purchase apps across Android devices.
Starting March 22, you can submit your Android app concepts for approval through the Verizon Developer Community portal....
GetJar, one of the many app stores we track in the WIP App Store wiki, commissioned a really great report from well-known mobile analyst Chetan Sharma on the state of the mobile app market that’s a must read for anybody involved with mobile apps. It’s a free download, too, so there’s no excuse not to spend a few minutes with it.
Chetan says there were 7 billion apps downloaded in 2009, and he predicts this will boom to 50 billion downloads by 2012, including both paid and free apps. He says apps generated revenues of $4.1 billion from sales, advertising and virtual goods in 2009, and this will jump to $17.5 billion in 2012.
A few other choice bits in the comprehensive, 19-page report:
- More than a third of app downloads came from Asia, more than any other region.
- Paid apps are strongest in North America, with the continent generating more than half the global paid app revenues.
- Furthermore, the average paid app price in North America is $1.09, compared to just under 80 cents in...
Carnival #214 from mobiThinking is jammed backed with great blog submissions this week. Make sure to visit and check them out! Here is just a small sampling of what you will find. Are App developers getting a raw deal from App Stores? What developers want and why by MSearchGroove’s Peggy Anne Salz considers how App Stores can provide a better service to developers, with a feedback mechanism, more say in how apps are marketed etc. This week at Communities Dominate Brands, Tomi Ahonen turns his attention to data and how much more mobile phones tell marketers about consumers than any other media. The interrelationship between mobile advertising and mobile payments is the subject of Raj Singh’s blog as he ponders cloud-based payment systems (such as PayPal), payment details on the device or the possibility that paid-for content providers, such as Apple’s iTunes, might want to become the next mobile wallet.
The WIP App Store Wiki now has 57 app stores, up from 46 at the beginning of February! Download the latest App Store report to check out and easily compare details on them all.
There was one big announcement in the app store arena from MWC: the Wholesale Applications Community, a major effort from about 25 mobile operators, three handset manufacturers, and the GSMA. The WAC is a sort of clearinghouse for each operator’s app stores, seeking to unify their submission processes and standardize developer access to network assets.
In short, this means that developers could potentially reach more than 3 million mobile subs across all the developers with a single submission! WAC is also promising to simplify the development process by using existing technical standards (OneAPI, JIL and OMTP Bondi to start) and making it easier for developers to create cross-platform apps. While it seems unlikely that WAC will make all the other app stores irrelevant, it should offer developers a great...
32 mobile appstores!
That's what we finished 2009 with (see January report on wipconnector)! And luckily we do not list yet the various appstore announcements on the verge of the mobile sphere like the Ford SYNC enabled appstore or Sun Java Store otherwise our wiki would be on fire.
So 2009 was the year of the appstore glut maybe… however it was also a year that saw new forms / concepts of appstores rather than un-differentiated ones, addressing specific issues such as discovery and recommendation or specific markets which can only be favorable for developers and consumers. Have a look at the newcomers for December and judge by yourself.
If we are to judge future smartphone platform success by the number of appstores distributing their apps, Android has a slight lead with 53% of appstores distributing Android apps, followed by Windows Mobile with 50% (mostly for historical reason one could claim), Blackberry with 40% and Symbian with 37.5% are forming a second group of...
Finally after 2 months of inputting, cleaning up, asking for data about the various appstores in the market we're finally at the stage where we can publish a summary pdf gathering all the data the wip appstore wiki holds about the 27 appstores inputted there at the beginning of December (and we have now reached 29…)
Our objective in publishing this information as a document is to make it easier for you to compare the various appstores by sitting them next to one another on a few sheet of paper. Whatever your purpose is : platform choice, country choice, pricing decision in a bird's eye view you'll have all the channels in the market. Going forward we will publish a monthly "dump" of the wiki for you to keep track of evolutions and changes in this space.
Having put this together for the first time there are a few things that jump to mind:
The theme at Over the Air 2009 for WIP this year was Appstores, to accompany the launch of the Appstore inventory wiki.
Caroline opened the event with a keynote on titled "It's raining appstores", where she went through the characteristics of various appstores and discussed revenue making strategies in this increasingly complex world.
On the second day I organized a quick session " Draw me your ideal appstore"…
Despite the lack of sleep and thanks to the famous Kit-Kat/Snickers/Twix combination we ended up with a rather interesting ideal appstore!
Thanks to Rafe, Andrew, Chris and ??? for their great participation!
The Ideal appstore (click to zoom)
Of course it might look a idealist, abstract, gibberish if you come fresh at it. So here are a few directions of reflexions that we explored and on which we would most welcome your opinions: