Hasta La Gadget!

With the economy lodged so firmly in the toilet we’re always glad to see some sort of good news on that front, so check out the latest numbers from comScore that show the market for downloadable time-wasters on smartphones grew by a massive 291 percent in the period between November of 2007 and 2008. That’s thanks in large part to the iPhone and its App Store, with sales on that platform alone accounting for 14 percent of all mobile game downloads and nearly one third of all iPhone users reporting they’d downloaded at least one game. That compares quite favorably to non-smartphone users, of whom just 3.8 percent have downloaded a game, driving that market to decline by 14 percent since 2007. Overall the mobile gaming industry bucked recessionary trends, grew a healthy 17 percent, and will now be shopping in the husky clothing section.

[Via PHONE Magazine]

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds

Smartphone videogame market explodes in 2008; dumbphone market wounded, but struggling on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple had already solidly cemented its reputation as the confused, identity crisis-stricken, moral dilemma-having lord ruler of the App Store with its recent approval of a number of browsers that would seemingly violate its “duplication of functionality” policy, but now it’s doing some serious soul-searching with this latest move. Remember Podcaster? The on-the-go podcast downloader predated Apple’s own mobile download capability by months — but Cupertino struck the thing down for encroaching on iTunes’ territory, seemingly dooming it to a life of ad hoc installs and jailbreaks. It’s just been given a fresh lease on life, though, emerging as “RSS Player” and killing off Podcaster’s built-in directory of casts; Apple’s suddenly cool with the revised app, giving it two thumbs-up on the way to the App Store, but it’s not clear if the directory functionality was the problem, there’s a policy change in play here, or the name change simply fooled the App Store admins into giving the green light. At any rate, in case you’re wondering why you’d shell out $1.99 for the pleasure of this “duplication of functionality,” RSS Player will let you blow by iTunes’ 10MB limit — and, of course, you can download any feed you like. Thanks, Apple. [Warning: iTunes link]

[Via UNEASYsilence]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio

Apple throws another curveball, approves Podcaster for the App Store with changes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wowsers, that little App Store side project Apple has going on sure doesn’t seem to be settling down. After launching in July of ’08 and hitting 100 million downloads in September, the App Store has just crossed the 500 million download mark — a mere six months after opening. Compare that to the iTunes Music Store, which took two whole years to cross the 500 million mark, though to be fair we have little idea of the paid to free ratio of app downloads. There are over 15,000 apps in the App Store currently, and sure, 14,500 of them are crap, with the rest being tip calculators, but we gotta hand it to Apple for pretty much unprecedented success in the mobile download space — now let us download SNES emulators!

[Thanks, Richard]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

App Store hits 500 million downloads: thanks, iFart originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No surprises here, but Sling Media has created a new SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone portal on its website in order to accomplish two important tasks. 1) To announce that it will indeed be submitted to Apple for certification this quarter and 2) to show off a new video of the software in action. If you just can’t wait, head to the read link and mash play.

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Video

SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone demoed on video, coming in Q1 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d be fibbing just a wee bit if we said that Eye-Fi functionality for the iPhone has always been imminent, but now that it’s real, we suppose we aren’t too surprised. Announced today at Macworld, the Eye-Fi application will enable iPhone owners (that just so happen to also own an Eye-Fi card) to upload images taken on their handset to their computer and the web. Reportedly, the app will allow users to aggregate all of their photos from both the iPhone and a digital camera into “organized folders on a computer and to one of 25 online photo sharing and social networking websites.” The app is also said to support geotagging just like the Eye-Fi Explore, though two crucial bits of info are sorely missing. First off, what happens with folks that don’t own an Eye-Fi card? And second, when is this app even coming out?

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras

Eye-Fi functionality comes to iPhone via new application originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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