Hasta La Gadget!

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Apple’s App Store has more smartphone apps than those of its competitors. But the sheer size of the library is not the only source of consternation for Google or Microsoft, which would both readily concede that it’s also important to obtain the kind of key apps, optimized apps and platform-first apps the iPhone enjoys. The iPhone’s commanding marketplace lead is due to several factors. These include the huge number and historical affluence of its users and the ease of its App Store.

The iPhone, though, was not the first phone to have apps. In fact, in its early days, it didn’t have apps at all as the company urged developers to create optimized web apps for the platform similar to what Mozilla is now advocating for its streamlined mobile operating system Boot2Gecko. Apple originally put its efforts into creating archetypical apps for tasks such as calling, browsing, email and mapping. Rather than open the iPhone to third-party developers at first, it handpicked partners for various features, such as Google for maps and Yahoo for weather and stocks.

Continue reading Switched On: iOS 6 gets back from the app

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software

Switched On: iOS 6 gets back from the app originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

In addition to sharing new details about its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, RIM used today’s BlackBerry Jam keynote to make an announcement about App World. The company just revealed that in addition to applications and games, the store will sell music, movies and TV shows — a move that brings it more in line with rival stores like Google Play and Apple’s App Store. That should please App World’s 80 million subscribers (a nice little figure RIM dropped in its keynote just now). Another stat: there are currently 105,000 apps in the store, with 3 billion downloads logged since the store’s opening. And, RIM says, BB 10 applications will join the herd soon: the company will begin accepting submissions on October 10th. Get it? BB 10 on 10/10? Clever, Thorsten.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

BlackBerry App World to sell music and movies, open to BB 10 app submissions on October 10th originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 12:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The Evernote Smart Notebook is here! Well, almost here — it arrives on October 1 — but we got our Moleskin-lovin’ hands on the app/notebook combo a bit ahead of schedule this evening. The combination works by combining the drawings, notes, and whatever other Moleskin-bound scribblings you pen with Evernote’s iOS App (said to be headed to Android as well). Snap a pic of your best Mega Man sketch and see the Blue Bomber appear magically in your Evernote account and on your phone! If you’re way into archiving, a handy set of stickers allows for quick tagging. The tags can even be customized if you’re not into Evernote’s suggested categories.

The whole concept is very neat, and it works … sort of. An Evernote rep tried repeatedly to snag images from the page with varying results. One time a shadow interfered, and another time the lighting just didn’t work out, before it finally worked. We’re lending Evernote the benefit of the doubt for now as we were shown the whole shebang in the middle of a busy, dramatically lit show floor. That said, at $29.95, if it doesn’t work out great, the worst that happens is you’re stuck with a slightly more expensive Moleskin than a normal model (around $15 on Amazon); the iOS companion app is free. Head past the break for a hands-on video.

Continue reading Evernote Smart Notebook hands-on (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Software, Mobile, Alt

Evernote Smart Notebook hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Popular deal website Groupon is venturing into the world of smart phone-based credit card payments today, launching the Groupon Payments initiative nationwide after a successful pilot program is the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this year. Groupon’s boasting a guaranteed lowest cost pricing to merchants using Groupon Payments for credit card transactions — MasterCard, Visa, and Discover will cost retailers 1.8 percent of credit card sales, plus a $0.15 per transaction fee, while American Express will cost three percent of credit card sales, plus a $0.15 per transaction fee. The biggest competition in the space comes from Square, headed by former Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, which charges a flat 2.75 percent rate on all transactions against all cards, though PayPal, Intuit, and Verifone all offer similar services.

Today’s news matches up directly with leaks we saw back in May, adding on that merchants will see the day’s credit card purchases credited to their bank accounts overnight, rather than waiting two to three business days (per standard practice). Beyond credit card services, Groupon’s Merchants app also accepts Groupon daily deals, which helps elucidate why Groupon would be interested in entering the mobile credit card payments market in the first place (beyond it being a lucrative market unto itself, of course). Interested parties can sign up over on Groupon’s website, and snag the free payments app right here. Finally — finally — you’ll be able to sell all those $10 gift certificates to Chili’s you’ve been hoarding. Perhaps charge $5 a pop for their $10 value and … is this a paradox? This might be a paradox.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Wireless, Internet, Mobile

Square competitor Groupon Payments launches today, promises lowest cost for retailers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  BusinessWire  | Email this | Comments

If you’d just put down Angry Birds Space for a moment, maybe we could tell you that mobile apps are kind of a big deal. How big of a deal? How’s about 45.6 billion downloads just this year — that’s a serious amount of birds lost in space! All of those downloads weren’t just Angry Birds venturing into the final frontier, of course. Gartner, Inc’s latest mobile report doesn’t actually break down how much of that enormous number pertains to Rovio’s hit franchise, but it does note that “free apps will account for nearly 90 percent of total mobile app store downloads in 2012.” That means of the nearly 46 billion apps downloaded this year, approximately 40.6 billion were free. Additionally, an entire quarter of the apps downloaded in 2012 were via Apple’s iOS app store — but that isn’t what’s driving app growth, necessarily. “The number of apps available is driven by an increasing number of stores in the market today,” Gartner research director Brian Blau notes. “These stores will see their combined share of total downloads increase, but demand for apps overall will still be dominated by Apple, Google, and Microsoft.”

And the growth doesn’t stop there. Blau predicts that 93 percent of all apps downloads will be of the free variety by 2016 — also, we’ll be downloading over 300 billion apps worldwide by the same year. Like we said, kind of a big deal.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, Software, Mobile

Gartner: Free apps dominate market, iOS App Store accounts for 25 percent of all content originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechCrunch  |  Gartner, Inc.  | Email this | Comments