Oct 26

Nielsen Revises iPad App Stats

Posted in: Apple, apps, ipad, statistics, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

A high-profile market research company radically revised its findings about how many iPad users download iPad apps.

Last week Nielsen published figures stating that 31 percent of iPad owners had never downloaded an app.

Now the company has revised its figures. The true number, Nielsen now says, is 9 percent.

In other words, the vast majority of iPad owners — more than 9 out of 10 — have downloaded an app. Games are the most popular category, followed by books and music, as shown in Nielsen’s revised graphic, shown here.

We reported on Nielsen’s claim and are now posting this update. We’re also updating our original post on the topic.

The original number was eye-catching and, if true, would have had significant implications for the viability of Apple’s app model, not only on the iPad and iPhone but on the soon-to-be-launched Mac App Store for OS X customers. The notion that one-third of tablet users were perfectly satisfied with the device’s web browser, e-mail client and other utilities was surprising, if not totally unbelievable.

We were taken in by the survey, but treated it with a dose of healthy skepticism:

If these figures are actually meaningful (ie. if the self-selecting sample-group actually contains more than a few dozen iPad owners) then perhaps the app store isn’t the competitive advantage that Apple believes it to be.

Turns out that the App Store may be a competitive advantage, after all.

In reporting the news, we’re only as good as our sources. Nielsen is usually a credible provider of market research, and we made a mistake in reporting their numbers without examining them more closely.

For its part, Nielsen hasn’t explained how it managed to overstate the number of non-app-downloading customers by a factor of three. At least they’ve corrected their original post.

via The Register

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Oct 26

Android Market surpasses 100,000 apps: can’t stop, won’t stop growing

Posted in: Android, android market, AndroidMarket, app, application, apps, Google, GoogleAndroid, Software, Today's Chili

Ah, there we go. Right around three months after we falsely suspected that El Goog had crossed the 100,000 mark in its Android Market, the company itself has today confirmed the passing of that line via Twitter. For those keeping count, it took but three months to go from 70,000 to 100,000 and seven months to go from 30,000 to this point. Of course, Apple’s still holding down the lead in terms of sheer numbers with close to 300,000, but there’s no question that the Android Market has nearly everything a boy (or girl, for that matter) could want. Except for a quote generator from Step Brothers. Oh, wait….

Android Market surpasses 100,000 apps: can’t stop, won’t stop growing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 03:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 24

Adobe announces Air 2.5 for TVs, tablets and phones, launches Adobe InMarket to package apps

Posted in: adobe, app, apps, AppStore, BlackBerry, blackberry playbook, BlackberryPlaybook, RIM, samsung, Today's Chili

Adobe’s making a serious play for the app space today, and it’s not limiting itself to phones — its new Air cross-platform runtime environment is designed to toss apps on your smart televisions and tablets as well. Air 2.5 supports accelerometers, multi-touch gestures, cameras and microphones, GPS data and hardware acceleration in a variety of silicon. What’s more, the company wants a piece of the action, so it’s going to help developers bring their Air 2.5 apps to market by partnering with the stores themselves, and charging a mere 30 percent to take care of your hosting, billing and app store approval — though we’re informed the service will be free for the first year if you sign up today. The newly-christened Adobe InMarket won’t help you get into the iTunes App Store, as you might expect, but it should assist with the Intel AppUp store… and perhaps a pair of brand-new marketplaces from RIM and Samsung as well.

Remember when Samsung said it had a single platform for TV and phones late last week? We think this was what the company was talking about, because we have Adobe’s word that the Samsung SmartTV will run Air 2.5 apps when it launches in early 2011. Air will also come standard in RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, but it’s not just for fun, productivity and games there — Adobe told us that the PlayBook’s entire UI is built on Air. We’re not sure quite what we think of Adobe’s role as encapsulated software middleman in the TV and tablet spaces, but we suppose that’s what the firm’s been doing on desktop PCs for years — after all, what’s Adobe Reader but a free way to open licensed PDFs? You should find the Adobe Air 2.5 SDK available on the company’s website today, and a full press release after the break.

Continue reading Adobe announces Air 2.5 for TVs, tablets and phones, launches Adobe InMarket to package apps

Adobe announces Air 2.5 for TVs, tablets and phones, launches Adobe InMarket to package apps originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 22

Amazon Will Let Readers Lend Kindle Books This Year

Posted in: amazon, Android, apps, e-books, e-readers, ios, kindle, nook, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

Amazon has good news for Kindle owners that it wanted to share with them first. A post from the Kindle team on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum says that 14-day lending will come to the Kindle sometime this year.

There is a catch: “Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period.” If you’re familiar with Barnes & Noble’s lending feature on the Nook, this isn’t a surprise. “Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.” Again, to borrow some jargon, this is a known issue.

Books will be lendable both to Kindle owners and users of Kindle apps, which is nice: even if you don’t have your own Kindle, you can borrow an e-book from someone who does.

The Kindle team also revealed that Kindle app users will soon also be able to read Kindle magazines and newspapers through the app. Periodicals had been a Kindle-only feature. Support for newspapers and magazines is coming to iOS “in the coming weeks” and Android and other app platforms “down the road.”

Since there’s so much news about Kindle’s e-reading competition lately, I guess Amazon just wanted to let Kindle users know that the company still loved them — and more importantly, that it’s going to keep giving them reasons to love the Kindle.

Coming Soon for Kindle [Amazon/Kindle Community Forums, via Kindle Review]

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Oct 22

Big Brother Apple and the Death of the Program [Video]

Posted in: Apple, apps, feature, ipad, iPhone, Mac, os x, Today's Chili, top

More than 25 years ago, a commercial warned us about the future of computers. Closed. Censored. Dark. A “garden of pure ideology.” How strange that that’s exactly what the future of Apple’s computers looks like today: the Mac App Store. More »

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Oct 22

“Shiny App Syndrome”: When Open Government Meets Closed Platforms

Posted in: Android, apps, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

It’s good for governments to find more ways to connect with their citizens, including the web. As the web goes mobile, open government should too. But governments shouldn’t develop apps for some mobile platforms and not others.

That’s Kevin Curry and Brownell Chalstrom’s problem with Texas.gov’s new iPhone app. The state of Texas recently overhauled its website for the desktop, but doesn’t have a mobile version. It also doesn’t have applications for Android, Blackberry or any other mobile platform.

This heated up discussion at the recent Govfresh Gov 2.0 conference in Manor, Texas. Curry, founder of the open government unconference City Camp, said that by limiting access to one platform and one device — and an expensive device, at that — Texas is empowering the already empowered, rather than broadening access for everyone.

Given the potential use cases and the sheer number of citizens whose only net-capable devices are mobile phones, mobile access to government data is definitely important. The trouble is when governments pick winners and losers, developing a presence on iPhone but not Android, or Facebook but not MySpace.

It’s not only the numbers of iPhone or Facebook users that attract governments. It’s the prestige. According to O’Reilly Radar’s government 2.0 reporter Alex Howard, “government technology shops, judging by their output, have become afflicted with a kind of ’shiny app syndrome,’ given that an app is a substantive accomplishment that can be trotted out for officials and the public.”

Brownell Chalstrom, a Manor Govfresh delegate, says that governments looking to develop for mobile should first look to create open websites using rich web standards like HTML5 and CSS3, and only then look to develop applications for platforms limited to users of an individual device or service. Open standards for open government, if you will.

“The goals that public officials pursue when they create new .gov websites or applications should be based upon civic good,” Howard writes. “If that civic good is to be rendered to a population increasingly connected to one another through smartphones, tablets and cellphones, truly open governments will employ methods that provide access to all citizens, not just the privileged few.”

“Shiny app syndrome” and Gov 2.0 [O’Reilly Radar]

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Oct 22

Survey: One Third of iPad Owners Have Never Downloaded an App

Posted in: apps, ipad, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

A new survey by the Nielsen Company shows that one third of iPad owners have never downloaded an application. In a section titled “A majority of iPad owners have already paid for content” fully 32% of iPad owners asked said that they “did not download an app.” This compares to 63% who had downloaded a paid app, and 5% who had only downloaded a free app.

The Nielsen survey polled “5,000 connected device owners who completed an online, self-administered survey,” but the actual number of iPad owners in this 5,000 isn’t specified, but one third seems an astonishingly high number, especially given that apps are so easy to buy, and you pretty much have to sign up to the iTunes Store just to get started with any iDevice.

Less surprising is the breakdown of paid downloads. Games are the top choice, with 62% of responders having bought one, closely followed by books (54%) and music (50%).

If these figures are actually meaningful (ie. if the self-selecting sample-group actually contains more than a few dozen iPad owners) then perhaps the app store isn’t the competitive advantage that Apple believes it to be. Perhaps all you really need in a store is Angry Birds and a copy of the Kama Sutra.

Connected Devices: Does the iPad Change Everything? [Nielsen Company blog]

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Oct 20

The Best Racing Game Apps [Appbattle]

Posted in: Android, apps, ios, iPhone, Today's Chili, top

When people argue that smartphones are on the level with Playstation or DS portable as gaming platforms, they’ll usually whip out a racing game. With good reason! iOS and Android’s racing games are actually some of their best, period. More »

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Oct 16

RIM promises to soothe BlackBerry app developers’ woes, says ‘we’re so there’

Posted in: app, apps, BlackBerry, developer, developers, RIM, Today's Chili
There’s no question that the BlackBerry App World hasn’t been quite the runaway success RIM hoped it would be, but the company is far from ready to throw in the towel, and it’s now promising some new measures to woo new developers and make the lives of current ones a bit easier. Some of those initiatives have already been rolled out — like new payment options — while others including a free analytics service will become available to developers in the coming weeks and months. As RIM’s head of application development, Alan Brenner, explains to The Wall Street Journal, RIM has been working for the past two years to make BlackBerrys more developer friendly, and he now says that “we’re so there.” They may not be quite as close as they think, however, as the WSJ also spoke to a number of developers who used words like “horrible” to describe the current state of things, while leading mobile game developer PopCap Games even went so far as to say that “RIM today is not really on our radar.”

RIM promises to soothe BlackBerry app developers’ woes, says ‘we’re so there’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 15

iPhone Band Rocks Out on NY Subway

Posted in: Apple, apps, iPhone, Music, Phones, Today's Chili

While riding the Subway this week, New York resident Brittany Tucker spotted the band Atomic Tom pulling a musical stunt on the train, jamming out their song “Take Me Out” on their iPhones. Each band member used an iPhone app to play a different part (drums, guitar, keyboard, vocals), and the end result is quite an ear worm.

Imagine if you were on that train. I’d be thinking, “Only in New York. Awesome.”

We’ve seen a number of geeky performers create experiment noises with iOS apps, and Atomic Tom’s performance is one of the better ones. Tune in by playing the video above.

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