Hasta La Gadget!

In a mix of user interface usage, number crunching, and good ol’ analytics, the group known as ABI Research has revealed that Apple’s App Store has their top score in the mobile application storefronts category here at the start of 2013. The report they’ve released ranks stores based on both implementation and innovation with Apple winning the overall combined score over both the Google Play app store and Microsoft’s Windows Store, Google’s working for Android and Microsoft’s working for Windows Phone devices.

Combined scores for both implementation and innovation in this analysis showed Apple to be winning over the competition with 80.8 out of 100. Google’s score ended up being 72.2 and Microsoft ended up with a lovely 63.9, both of these also out of a max score of 100. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t Apple who won out when the scores were stacked up for innovation alone, with Microsoft scoring in at 77 out of 100 and Google coming in with 76, just the tiniest of points below the Windows Phone platform.

The innovation category for ABI Research works with what they say are the following five criteria: discovery, quality control, ease of use, “Breadth of Ecosystem”, and “Hosting and Deployment.” When they say Breadth of Ecosystem, they mean the availability of different kinds of media like apps, music, videos, and different kinds of apps, made for multiple screen sizes and even separate sections for phones and tablets. Hosting and Deployment for this study includes file-size limits as well as different methods for downloading media.

ABI researcher Aapo Markkanen made it clear this week that the study shows Microsoft doing well for their devices, but that it could all be for nothing if the Windows Phone platform doesn’t take off in a rather big way, rather soon: “Microsoft does seem to invest strongly in both personalized recommendation and editorial curation of apps. … [this approach] should favor developers with good products and little extra money to spare, over the ones that have mediocre products but big marketing budgets, [but this] won’t really matter if the devices powered by Windows Phone end up selling badly.”

[via ComputerWorld]

ABI ranks Apple App Store tops at start of 2013 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nokia refreshed its web browser for the Asha line with the outing of the 308 and 309 last week and now it’s spreading the love to Lumia. Announced today via the company’s Beta Labs site, Nokia Xpress leverages the cloud to compress internet data up to 85 percent, help users keep tabs on their consumption habits and even reformats favorited sites into a magazine-like layout. The Windows Phone app also enables users to make “smart searches” for content across Bing and YouTube with a simple tap of a selected term, as well as translate the contents of a foreign language page easily from the settings menu. Unfortunately, the app isn’t yet available on the Marketplace, so for the time being, you’ll have to download it direct from the source below.

Continue reading Nokia Xpress brings cloud-based compression to the Lumia line (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Software, Mobile, Nokia

Nokia Xpress brings cloud-based compression to the Lumia line (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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.

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It appears that Microsoft is having some issues with a few new Windows Phone 7.5 apps, and as a result has decided to stop publishing new ones as it works on delivering a fix. According to a recent post on the Microsoft blog, there’s a glitch with the digital certificates used to sign apps, meaning that some apps which were published in the last few days aren’t installing properly. Microsoft also says that the problem has nothing to do with your phone, so at least you don’t have to worry about that.

The blog post states that this issue only affects phones that were upgraded to Windows Phone 7.5 and not phones that came with 7.5 pre-installed, but some commenters on the blog post are saying that isn’t the case. Microsoft also says that this certificate issue only affects a “small percentage of the 100,000-plus apps in Marketplace,” pointing to apps like The New York Times, WhatsApp, and Translator from Bing – all three of which were updated recently – as examples.

If you run into this problem, it’s recommended that you just wait until Microsoft has delivered a fix. Microsoft warns not to delete the app that’s giving you grief, as you probably won’t be able to download it again until a fix has been issued, and you risk losing any saved data with the app by doing that. So, just sitting tight and waiting for that fix to arrive seems to be the best thing you can do in this case.

Microsoft doesn’t give a time frame for this fix, so we could be waiting a little while for it land. Things are looking hopeful though, as the company says it is “already planning to roll out a fix,” so it may not be that long before it arrives. Keep it tuned here to SlashGear, as we’ll let you know of any new developments with this issue.

Microsoft temporarily stops publishing new Windows Phone apps is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft may face a few uncomfortable questions at Build this fall. A bug in digital signatures resulting from the Windows Phone Dev Center rollout is preventing a “small percentage” of apps in the Windows Phone Store, including not-so-insignificant titles like WhatsApp and Microsoft’s own Translator, from installing on older phones that had to upgrade to Windows Phone 7.5 after the fact. While the company already has a fix in the works, it’s performing some painful triage to keep the damage from spreading: it’s putting the brakes on publishing any new apps until certificate signing is back under control. Microsoft doesn’t yet know when it can open the taps once more, either. The momentary freeze won’t stop downloads of already-published apps, but it’s likely to leave a few customers jittery about resetting their phones — and developers twiddling their thumbs.

Filed under: Cellphones

Microsoft halts posting new Windows Phone apps after some refuse to install on older devices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Aug 2012 23:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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