| It is our pleasure to release our monthly Distimo Report, based on January 2010 data. |  |
This monthly report focuses on Games in Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile in the United States. The major findings are:
You can download the report here. |
In the past few days a lot of buzz went around about the removal of more or less explicit sexual content apps from the Apple App Store. Apps like Wooble iBoobs, were removed from the store while other explicit apps like the Playboy app remained. In total 5,000 apps, are said to be pulled away. From our data we saw a decrease over the weekend of 2,000 apps. This most likely is the first weekly decline since the store launched.
Now developers that are trying to add new apps through iTunesConnect, can select a new category (screenshot) called ‘explicit’, however the category doesn’t show up in the actual App Store yet. We’ll keep you posted if Apple will launch this category anytime soon.
Today independent app store PocketGear announced the acquisition of Handango. The new combination will be a provider of smartphone applications globally for the BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, and Linux platforms, with over 140,000 applications in their library from more than 32,000 developers.
According to PocketGear’s CEO Jud Bowman:
Our vision is to facilitate an open app store ecosystem that supports every mobile device, every application, and every carrier network globally.
After this acquisition, the resulting company will continue to operate under the PocketGear name. Handango will join the PocketGear network of direct-to-consumer app storefronts, which also includes SymbianGear.com, AndroidGear.com, RIMGear.com, Smartphone.net and PalmGear.com. More than 1,000 developers are also leveraging the firm’s developer storefront solutions to market and sell their software directly from their own websites and other marketing channels. According to PocketGear, together with Handango it has generated more than $400 million in mobile application revenues to date. (via Fierce Developer)
We just got back from an amazing week at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona. This congress organized by the GSM Association saw that more than 49,000 visitors from 200 countries attending this years four-day conference and exhibition.
During the congress, many major players in the mobile industry announced their newest products and plans for the coming year. See our blog for an overview of the most important application store announcements.
On the first day of the congress, we gave a presentation during the Mobile Applications – Innovation vs. Fragmentation session. Our presentation was titled “Mobile Application Stores – State Of Play” and highlights some of our findings on the six largest device manufacturer stores; Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
Here are the slides from our presentation:
View more presentations from distimo.
Logo Ericsson
Ericsson tries with a new white label appstore, aimed at carriers, to get a piece of the fast growing mobile phone application market.
Hans Vestberg (CEO) announced the eStore at the MWC in Barcelona, a multiple platform store starting with a library of 30,000 apps, both paid and free. Carriers can add the store to their portfolio, while Ericsson takes care of the technology, maintenance of the shop and contact with developers. According to Vestberg “It will provide operators with an open landscape and an opportunity for them to quickly set up their own app stores.”
The payments are settled via carrier billing. Both Ericsson and the carrier earn a percentage of the sales via the eStore, however according to the developers website, 70% of the proceeds go to the developers.
According to their press release Ericsson teamed up with the Opera Software team to gain from their experience in widget technology and their knowledge about all different platforms.
Given the recently announced ‘wholesale applications community’ carried by 24 partners including LG, Sony Ericsson and Samsung it is interesting to note that Ericsson now launches this white label app store initiative. Ericsson claims to be already in discussions with a number of operators, but no names are disclosed.
As expected Microsoft announced yesterday, on Mobile World Congress, their new Mobile OS and rebranded it from Windows Mobile 7 to Windows Phone. Microsoft rebuilt the OS from the ground up and scrapped almost everything from the look and feel down to the code.
The OS will look quite like the interface already in place on the Zune HD and includes all techniques available on most modern smartphones. The OS has deep integration with Xbox LIVE and Zune and new and improved social networking tools which allows fast access to content in the cloud.
Windows Marketplace will of course be an important part of the new experience, allowing customer to personalize the phone to their needs. Given Microsoft’s choice to completely redesign the core, applications available to Windows Mobile 6 will not work on Windows Phone.
Given the buzz on Twitter at the moment and the positive press it seems that Microsoft will again successfully introduce an OS in the 7 series. Still, the question remains whether Microsoft is in time. The iPhone is already in market for almost 3 years and the first phones will only be available by holiday season 2010, i.e. end of this year.
Windows Phone 7 Series
According to the press release, partners from around the world have committed to include Windows Phone 7 Series in their portfolio plans. They include mobile operators AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone and manufacturers Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC Corp., HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm Inc. These partners are not, like in the past, free to develop the phones at their will, because Microsoft set rigid specifications that have to be met like the buttons configuration, CPU speed and memory.
Since Microsoft suggests that mobile devices will become more important than PC’s and estimates that more than 1 billion mobile devices will access the Internet in 2010 they surely see the importance of the market and given their long breath in the game console market they might succeed with the new OS. Very important to be successful will be the content in the marketplace, which according to our latest report (January 2010) is very limited in their Marketplace for Mobile today.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a number of the world’s leading telecommunications operators and device manufacturers launched an open global alliance to compete with appstores like the Apple App Store and Google Android Market.
The alliance, consisting of 24 carriers, including large operators like Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and NTT DoCoMo while handset manufacturers LG, Sony Ericsson and Samsung also joined, aims to build an environment or ’wholesale applications community’ where applications can be developed irrespective of device or technology.
According to their website the alliance:
- Will establish a simple route to market for developers and provide them with access to a customer base of over 3 billion customers.
- The alliance aims to unite a fragmented marketplace by involving players from all related industries to create a community based on openness and transparency.
- We believe our model presents the most compelling format on the market where developers will thrive and customers will reap the benefits of greater choice.
Of course, the huge success of the Apple App Store made the carriers and manufacturers decide to step into this market, where Apple takes around 30% of every sale via its platform. Although no information is disclosed, it is likely the members will, just like Vodafone already does on its 360 platform, adopt a similar model.
Air Logo
Today Adobe announced at the Mobile World Congress that they are going to extend their AIR platform to mobile devices, helping out many mobile developers facing problems with deployment on multiple platforms.
AIR runtime lets developers use web technologies to build rich Internet applications that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems. Today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Adobe will, according to their press release, announce the extension of AIR to mobile devices, starting with Android and Blackberry OS by 2010. Developers can now develop applications for Android and deploy the application at the same time to desktop environments like Windows, Mac and Linux or, by using the iPhone Flash package, to the iPhone.
With support for mobile devices Adobe AIR includes specific functionality offered by mobile operating systems and devices such as multi-touch, gesture inputs, accelerometers, geolocation and screen orientation. The AIR team already worked with several developers of applications currently available in the Apple App Store to get their apps running on AIR Android, including Southpark Avatar Creator and many games.
There is more to be announced the coming days at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona; we will keep you informed. Distimo is present at the congress as well. If you want to meet, please contact us!
GetJar
Sprint and GetJar announced that the GetJar catalog is now available on the Sprint portal for most Sprint handsets. According to VentureBeat, the companies don’t pay each other anything. Instead GetJar monetizes by enabling developers to buy downloads, while Sprint now offers a free service to their consumer base.
Interestingly, Handmark powers Sprint’s Digital Lounge. Both Handmark and GetJar support BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile applications. It is unknown if and how the partnership with GetJar influences the Sprint Digital Lounge.
GetJar is working on providing paid applications in their store. Until then, Sprint’s customers will have access only to GetJar’s free catalog of apps.
Last week, GetJar also announced a white label version of their app store, enabling other companies to easily create an app store, offering GetJar’s vast selection of content.
There are currently over 30 mobile app stores and this number continues to grow. The latest addition is Amazon, as it aims to bring applications to the Kindle via its store. Distimo tracks all of these stores on a daily basis and we decided to sit down with several developers who have day-to-day experience in monetizing content to talk about their experiences.
Following our discussions with them, we ranked the five largest manufacturer stores (Apple App Store, Google Android Market, BlackBerry App World, Nokia Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile) across four categories. The ranking is based on several criteria that are important for developers who are looking to monetize their apps.
See the ranking of these stores and the full post on VentureBeat.
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