Hasta La Gadget!

With the sales of Android smartphones rising fast, sales of apps for the phones should be booming, too. They aren’t.

At least, not at the rate Android platform manager Eric Chu wants them to be. At a conference Tuesday, the Google employee said his company is “not happy” with the number of paid app purchases, and we should expect changes in the Android Market.

Chu highlighted a few of those changes during a Q&A session at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco.

The company plans to introduce an in-app payments system — which lets you buy things like virtual goods within the app itself (a shiny new Farmville shovel, for example) — within the first quarter of 2011.

“Helping developers monetize is very important to us,” Chu said.

Apple has supported in-app payments since October 2009, while Android developers have relied on Paypal X for payments outside the Android Market. In-app payments were set to launch last quarter, but a full plate of Christmas-app programming kept the developers from giving Google enough feedback, says Chu.

Google also plans to continue moving forward with carrier billing, which lets you bill your app purchases to your cellphone bill. “It’s one of the lowest-friction models,” Chu said.

Google introduced its first instance of carrier billing to AT&T customers in December, so it’s probable that with positive developer feedback, Google will expand the ability to work with other carriers. According to Forbes, Chu said the carrier setup process was “both expensive and time-consuming.”

2010 has been a boom year for mobile apps overall. Apple recently announced the 10 billionth app download from its own app store, which has more than 400,000 apps to choose from.

While the Android Market isn’t quite as large as Apple’s store, Android recently hit an unofficial milestone surpassing 200,000 apps available for download, according to Android-statistics-tracking site AndroLib. Global mobile-app revenues are projected to surpass $15.1 billion in 2011, according to a report from Gartner research released Wednesday. That’s a 190 percent increase from 2010 revenues.

As Android has matured over the two years since its initial release, developer interest has grown. A report released by IDC on Tuesday showed 76 percent of developers surveyed are “very interested” in developing apps for upcoming Android OS-run tablets. A reported 85 Android-running tablets debuted this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• Google Removes Flash App From Android Market
• Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market
• Your Froyo Tablet Probably Won’t Support Android Market
• Android Market Terms of Service Confirm Googlephone Kill Switch
• Gameloft Sidesteps Android Market for Mobile Assassin’s Creed, HAWX

It’s definitely one of the first things we thought of trying with AT&T’s 3G MicroCell back in 2009, but our dreams were quickly dashed after finding that said device was hard-wired to only operate when receiving a GPS lock within the United States of America. Thankfully, it looks as if at least a few engineers at Ubiquisys are riding our same train of thought, and come Mobile World Congress, it’ll be debuting the device of our dreams. The Attocell is described as a personal femtocell for use with 3G smartphones, and best of all, it’s designed for use internationally. In essence, this would allow a smartphone from one country to use their international web connection to tunnel a cell call through — presumably free of charge — and definitely bypassing those nasty roaming fees that are incurred when ringing through an overseas cellular network. The company admits that it has been tested with the iPhone, BlackBerry handsets, a few Nokia phones and a gaggle of Android handsets, and we’re guessing that Windows Phone 7 and webOS users won’t have any issues, either.

The idea is fairly simple: connect the Attocell to your laptop via USB, which provides power and an internet connection. From there, it’ll analyze the IP address and radio environment to determine which country it is in, and sets its 3G radio power accordingly to below the licensed level. In some countries its range will be just five millimeters, in other countries, it could cover a whole room. For those in the former, you’ll need to place your phone atop the dongle and use a Bluetooth headset to make a call, but hey, it’s still better than paying AT&T two arms and the vast majority of a leg just to phone home from wherever you may be. Crazier still, Ubiquisys thinks that the device’s low power output — coupled with its ability to “continuously monitor its radio environment to ensure that there is zero impact on existing mobile networks” — will make the Attocell exempt from regulatory controls and the requirement for type approval. Here’s hoping it flies through just as the company hopes, and we’ll be hitting the floor in Barcelona to pry out a price point, release date any carrier deals they’ve managed to land.

Ubiquisys unveils Attocell: personal femtocell designed to work internationally, make dreams come true originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Father of the internet, Vint Cerf, is taking one on the knuckles this week for the inevitable diminution of the world’s IPv4 addresses. Last Friday, The Sydney Morning Herald ran a sensational story titled, “Internet Armageddon all my fault: Google chief,” in which Cerf warned of an end to unique IP addresses “within weeks.” The story was, of course, a bit tongue-in-cheek, considering the industry has long anticipated and prepared for said Armageddon. Back in 1977, Cerf led a team of DARPA researchers in creating IPv4, which limits IP addresses to four 8-bit numbers or 32-bits total, providing for 4.3 billion addresses: not nearly enough by today’s standards. In the article, Cerf said he never expected his protocol to take off, adding, “Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?” The IPv4’s successor, IPv6, which enlists four 32-bit numbers or 128 bits total, was developed soon after Cerf’s protocol and is now getting attention from internet giants like Google and Facebook, who will launch World IPv6 Day this June. Considering IPv6 makes for 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 unique addresses, we probably won’t be hearing of an IP apocalypse anytime soon.

Vint Cerf on IPv4 depletion: ‘Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After Google’s uncharacteristic (and swift) action against Flash game clearinghouse Kongregate when its Android app went live a few days ago, it wasn’t clear what was going to have to happen to get it back in the Market — but they’re giving it a shot today by making a few key tweaks and republishing. Most notably, version 1.1 no longer dumps Flash games that you download to SD storage; instead, the phone’s browser cache is used just as for any other website you visit, which would seem to be a definitive step toward giving the app less of an “app store” feel — precisely the thing that Google’s concerned about. We’ll have to wait and see whether this puppy stays deployed… but for now, you can grab it from the Market.

Kongregate makes triumphant return to Android Market after a few tweaks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After a bit of a false start, Google’s finally officially turned on Google Voice number porting for all existing users. $20 is all it takes to swap your main line over to the service, although you’ll have to cancel your existing service contracts to make it all happen. The service is currently only for existing GV users, so you can’t open a new account and port straight away, but Google says new accounts will get the option in the “next few weeks.” So — anyone out there going to take the plunge?

Continue reading Google Voice number porting officially launched

Google Voice number porting officially launched originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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