Archive for December, 2009

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Nokia Ovi Store Shows First Maemo Apps

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

In November, Nokia launched the N900 phone, the first model running Maemo, a Linux based operating system. Nokia plans to launch more phones with Maemo in 2010. It was already expected, but now the signs are very clear: Maemo Applications are coming to the Ovi Store.

The Nokia Ovi Store currently shows the first Maemo apps:

Maemo apps in Nokia Ovi Store

Maemo apps in Nokia Ovi Store

The N900 is not included in the list of supported devices of Ovi Store, but several applications for Nokia’s new platform are already visible. Thanks to Allaboutphones.nl for spotting this.

The Ovi Store now contains 29 Maemo applications, which are all free. It is expected that Nokia will announce full support for Maemo in Ovi Store early January. We updated Appstores.info with these details.

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Posted in Nokia Ovi Store | 1 Comment »

Distimo Reports on Ericsson Labs

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

We are glad to announce Ericsson Labs will, from now on, make our monthly reports available for developers via the Ericsson Labs blog. The latest Distimo Report on Location Based Applications, which was made in cooperation with Skyhook Wireless, is already published there.

Ericsson Labs is a concept for open innovation. The site holds APIs, resources, offerings, and various expert commentaries, produced by Ericsson. This assortment provides technologies and communities for developers and makes it easy to get in touch with a variety of experts from different fields.
The cutting-edge technologies available on Labs help developers create new innovative services. These services can then be made available to end-users via any established application store or to other developers at Ericsson Labs via our applications showroom.

Ericsson Labs wants to help mobile developers in creating new innovative services. Via their website API’s, resources and various expert commentaries are provided to developers.

Ericsson Labs

Ericsson Labs

The site also has an applications showroom, where you can try out applications and games made available by both Ericsson Labs and external developers.

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Posted in Distimo Report | No Comments »

Samsung Bada To Support In-App Purchasing

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Samsung just released a set of videos from the Bada Launch Ceremony that was held on December 8 in London. Bada is a software layer that Samsung has added on top of its existing proprietary mobile phone operating system. This will allow developers to create applications for Samsung’s phones. Right now, developers can already get their applications on Samsung phones using Java, but the goal of Bada is to make this easier and give developers access to more phone functionality in order to create more compelling apps for consumers.

The first Bada devices will enter the market in the first half of 2010. Developers can start to create Bada applications with the SDK Samsung published.

The videos show some interesting announcements for Bada and the Samsung Application Store. First, the Bada platform enables developers to use In-App Purchasing for their Bada applications:

Bada In-App Purchasing

Bada In-App Purchasing

The details on how this will work in relation to the Application Store are yet to be announced. Samsung also said that Bada applications will be available in the Samsung Application Store, which is currently available in the UK, France and Italy, and supports Windows Mobile applications. In the beginning of next year, the number of supported countries will grow to 50, Samsung announced.

To purchase Bada applications from the Samsung Application Store, consumers will be able to use a credit card or operator billing. In the presentation Samsung highlighted that a user of the store will not be required to register before buying an application:

Samsung Application Store - Billing

Samsung Application Store - Billing

More details should be released in the first half of 2010, when the first Bada phones enter the market. See the full videos of the Bada Launch Ceremony here.

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Posted in Samsung App Store | 3 Comments »

GetJar’s Most Downloaded Worldwide: Social Apps Performing Best

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

GetJar, one of the largest independent application stores out there, shared their most downloaded apps in November with us. Facebook Mobile was downloaded most, with eBuddy coming second and Opera Mini third. Mig33 and Nimbuzz performed very good as well, ranking fourth and fifth respectively. Among the 20 globally most downloaded apps in November, 10 are from the Social & Messaging category, and 4 from the Music category.

Additionally, GetJar sent us the download numbers to date of these applications specifically, which you can see below.

GetJar Top 20 Worldwide

GetJar Top 20 Worldwide (Click to enlarge)

eBuddy comes first, with over 34M downloads, and 2M downloads for their Lite application to date. Opera Mini is second, with just over 30M downloads, and Facebook is third with well over 27M downloads to date. Facebook had only 14.4M downloads to date at the end of October; hence Facebook has been downloaded over 13M times in less than two months. The 20 highest ranked applications in November received 192M downloads in total to date.

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Posted in Getjar | No Comments »

Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA To Feature Android Apps In PlayNow Arena

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Sony Ericsson’s new phone, the XPERIA X10 will be available in selected markets in the first quarter of 2010. Previously we reported on the decision of Sony Ericsson to pre-install Android Market, now however they announced that PlayNow will be pre-installed on the device. Sony Ericsson doesn’t report anything about whether Android Market will still be pre-installed on the device as well.

Sony Ericsson invited developers to submit Android applications to PlayNow right, which can be done here. Besides Android, PlayNow Arena supports Java, Symbian, Flash Lite and Windows Mobile content. The revenue share for developers is 70%, the same as on Android Market and for distributing other content than Android apps using PlayNow.

We have updated the store in our app store overview on appstores.info

EDIT: Sony Ericsson just tweeted about the fact that Android Market will be available on all SE Android Phones and will not be replaced with PlayNow.

Posted in Android Market, Sony Ericsson PlayNow | No Comments »

Distimo And Skyhook Report November 2009: Location Based Applications

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

november_reportEvery month we publish a report highlighting trends in the different mobile app stores. For the November Report, which is now available, Distimo partnered with Skyhook Wireless. The combination of Skyhook’s location based application list with Distimo’s app store metrics gives unique insights in these types of applications.

The report covers the Apple App Store, Google Android Market and RIM’s BlackBerry App World.

New and noteworthy:

1. The Apple App Store has the largest proportion of paid location based applications (57%), with BlackBerry coming second (49%) and Google Android Market third (21%).

2. Prices of Maps & Navigation applications on BlackBerry App World decreased from $16.13 in September to $13.74 (-14.8%) in November, while the average prices on Apple App Store and Google Android Market remained fairly stable despite the announcement and introduction of free Google Maps Navigation.

3. The average price of location based applications on BlackBerry App World is about twice as high as on the Apple App Store ($14.37 compared to $7.34).

4. Besides the Navigation and Travel categories, most location based applications are published in News & Weather and Social, such as AccuWeather, foursquare and Loopt.

The report was covered by GigaOM here.

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Posted in Distimo Report | 1 Comment »

Distimo Launches Appstores.info

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

When we started Distimo, there were only a couple app stores in the market. A lot has happened since then, with more and more of the major phone manufacturers and operators launching mobile application stores. We started tracking all these stores on our blog and in our mobile app store overview. This overview quickly contained over 25 stores. We received a lot of positive feedback about this overview, but also noticed it was becoming more difficult to use with every new store we added.

That’s why we decided to build a brand new mobile app store overview. We are excited to announce the launch of Appstores.info!

Appstores.info

Appstores.info

A short overview of what you can do with Appstores.info:

  • Browse through all available mobile application stores.
  • View the most important and up-to-date characteristics per store, such as number of applications, billing methods, developer fees, etc.
  • Search stores based on Category, Supported Platforms, Available Countries and Billing Methods.
  • View the latest news about each store (integration with our blog).
  • Add up to date app store information from Distimo to your blog posts and sites by using our widgets.

We hope you like it and are looking forward to your feedback!

the Distimo team

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Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Recap of this week’s app store news

Saturday, December 19th, 2009
  • Motorola is launching an own application store for Android phones
  • T-Mobile US announced operator billing for the Android Market
  • Microsoft launched Bing in the Apple App Store, and is now among the 100 highest ranked apps worldwide

Posted in Weekly news recap | 1 Comment »

Bing Among 100 Highest Ranked Apps Worldwide In Apple App Store

Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Bing for iPhone

Bing for iPhone

Yesterday, Microsoft launched an iPhone version of its Bing search engine in the Apple App Store. Bing allows users to search the web or maps by voice, and it is free. After only one day in the App Store, Bing is now ranked as one of the 100 Top Overall most downloaded iPhone applications in 47 out of 77 Apple App Store countries. Among these countries are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, and more.

Bing is published in the Reference category. A comparable application in this category is the Google Mobile App, which is now ranked below Bing. Of all free Reference applications, Bing is now one of the top 10 most downloaded apps in 72 out of 77 countries. It is ranked number 1 in 8 countries, with among those the United States, Italy and The Netherlands.

The Apple App Store is not the only store that offers Bing right now. Microsoft also published their new search app to GetJar and of course Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Bing definitely has made a successful start in the Apple App Store, and it will be interesting to see how popular it will remain over time. We will keep tracking it in all stores and post an update soon.

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Posted in Apple App Store for iPhone | No Comments »

T-Mobile Announces Operator Billing For Android Market

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Operator Billing T-Mobile on Android Market

Operator Billing T-Mobile on Android Market

T-Mobile announced it will enable customers on post-paid accounts with devices running Android 1.6 to pay using their T-mobile account. Beginning December 9th, customers will receive an update to Android Market that enables them to choose between paying using their Credit card or T-mobile account.

All customers will receive the update by early January 2010. One small thing though; customers will only be able to pay for applications using operator billing when the application developer has set the price in USD.

In Google Android Market, publishers have to sell their applications in the currency of their home country, being either Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom or United States. So for developers from any other country than the US, the T-Mobile Operator Billing will not be available yet. In these cases, customers will have to pay using Credit card.

As many customers see credit card billing as a barrier to purchase applications, we expect the addition of operator billing to increase the amount of application purchases from US developers in Google Android Market.

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Posted in Android Market | 2 Comments »

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