Archive for the ‘Android Market’ Category

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Adobe’s Platform To Deliver Apps Across All Phones

Monday, February 15th, 2010
Air Logo

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!

Posted in Android Market, BlackBerry App World | No Comments »

Distimo Report – December 2009

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
It is our pleasure to release our monthly Distimo Report, based on December 2009 data. Distimo Report Logo
This report covers five application stores: Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

This month’s most important findings are:

  • In Google Android Market, 65% of the publishers are located in the United States, 12% in the United Kingdom, 20% in Europe and 3% in Japan.
  • Publishers located in Europe price their applications highest with an average of $4.42, which is 49% higher than publishers located in the United States.
  • Applications in Apple App Store, Google Android Market and Nokia Ovi Store are priced at around $3.50. Windows Marketplace for Mobile and BlackBerry App World are more expensive, averaging $6.99 and $8.26 respectively.
  • Because of Microsoft’s market validation guidelines and additional fees for distributing applications in more than one country, the number of applications available in some countries is only a small percentage (<5%) of applications available worldwide.

You can download the report here.

This report was covered on TechCrunch here.

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Posted in Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Distimo Report, Nokia Ovi Store, Windows Marketplace | 1 Comment »

LG Releases Its First Android Device

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
LG's First Android Device: GW260

LG's First Android Device: GW260

As announced previously, LG just released its first Android device, the GW620 (LG InTouch max). Interestingly, LG touts the personalisation options of the phone through Google Android Market:

Personalise your phone with a series of apps to suit you, from news and weather apps, to games apps, and your favourite social networking apps including Facebook and Twitter.

The release follows LG’s announcement that Android will power half of the smartphones they will launch in 2010. This is bad news for Microsoft, as LG has shipped many Windows Mobile devices to date.

It doesn’t seem that LG is planning to include its own application store on the device, which currently supports applications for Windows Mobile only.

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Posted in Android Market, LG Application Store | 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 »

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 | No Comments »

Motorola Launching Own Android App Store

Monday, December 14th, 2009

This weekend, the team at AndroidandMe discovered that Motorola will launch its own app store for its Android based phones. It is called Shop4Apps and was temporarily visible on the Motorola website, before it got taken down again this weekend. This is not the first store that will offer Android applications outside Google’s Android Market. Already several independent stores for Android are available, but Motorola is the first big handset vendor to launch one.

Motorola Shop4Apps
Motorola Shop4Apps

Not many details are disclosed yet, but this is what is known so far:

The store will be accessible from the PC in a web version and offers an on-device client, called the MotoAppstore. Motorola will  launch the store initially in the US, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, but no launch date is announced yet. The store will offer  automatic notification alerts to customers for application updates and it will be possible to re-download and transfer your apps to a new phone.

Since Android is an open platform, it is possible to install stores besides Google’s Android Market. The problem however is that most of the new independent Android stores are not pre-installed on the device. Motorola runs a customized version of the Android OS on its phones. It could be possible for Motorola to also pre-install the MotoAppstore, even instead of the Google Android Market.

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Posted in Android Market | 3 Comments »

AppJam Presentation Wrapup and Slides

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

AppJam

Last Monday, we went to AppJam in London, a European focused meet-up to share knowledge and learn more about developments from the major app stores. I was keynote speaker at the event and gave a presentation about application store stats, which you can find embedded below. The major findings in this presentation were:

  • Apple App Store leads the pack in terms of amount of applications, having about a 100,000 applications available, compared to Android Market (14,000) and BlackBerry App World (3,300).
  • Increase of amount of applications on Android Market and BlackBerry App World however will be driven by the amount of devices coming available with these stores pre-installed, and additional country support.
  • Android Market has significant more free applications available, which may be caused by Google’s less strict approval process and the necessity to use Google Checkout for payments
  • BlackBerry applications are about 3 times as expensive as Android’s and Apple’s. Cross-store publishers also charge higher prices for their apps on App World.
  • Apple’s popularity ranking system favours cheap applications, however, most revenue is made by the more expensive applications, in spite of having less downloads than the cheap applications. The average price for the most popular applications was $2,58 in October, and $10.30 for the most grossing applications.
  • When it comes to in-app purchasing, Games are most succesful at making revenue. Read more about this on TechCrunch.
  • Succesful apps get more exposure on Android and App World than on Apple App Store. The average amount of days in the top 100 for the Apple App Store was only 14, while for Android and BlackBerry this was 26 and 20 respectively (October).

I would like to thank the organizers, Laurence and Tania, for the great event! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in mobile apps!

If you have any questions, please contact .

Distimo App Jam Presentation

View more documents from distimo.

Posted in Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World | No Comments »

Distimo Report October 2009: In-App Purchasing And Cross-Store Developers

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Every month we publish a report highlighting trends in the different mobile app stores. Distimo Report for October 2009 is now available.

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

You can download the free report here.

New and noteworthy:

  1. Developers publishing applications in multiple application stores price their applications lowest on Apple’s App Store.
  2. The same application titles are priced significantly higher on BlackBerry App World and Google Android Market than on the Apple App Store.
  3. On the Apple App Store, Games and Social Networking applications have benefited most from in-app purchasing for free applications.
  4. BlackBerry App World prices have been increasing since mid-October, from $5.11 to $5.60 (+9.6%), while pricing on the Apple App Store and Google Android Market have remained fairly stable.
Developpublishing applications in multiple application stores price their applications lowest on Apple’s App Store.
The same application titles are priced significantly higher on BlackBerry App World and Google Android Market than on the Apple
App Store.
On the Apple App Store, Games and Social Networking applications have benefited most from in-app purchasing for free applications.
BlackBerry App World prices have been increasing since mid-October, from $5.11 to $5.60 (+9.6%), while pricing on the Apple App
Store and Google Android Market have remained fairly stable

The report was covered by TechCrunch here.

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Posted in Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Distimo Report | 7 Comments »

AndAppStore Targeting Google Unapproved Android Devices

Thursday, November 5th, 2009
AndAppStore Logo

On our blog and mobile app store overview we try to cover all stores in the market. Next to the likes of Apple and Android, there are several smaller application stores that are receiving less attention. One of these stores is AndAppStore, an app store for Google Android devices.

AndAppStore was launched in October 2008, and targets Android devices that are not approved by Google. Android can be installed on many devices as it is open source, but Android Market can’t. Hence, this results in an opportunity for other application stores, the gap which AndAppStore tries to fill.

AndAppStore Android application

AndAppStore client

According to AndAppStore, they currently have 250 Android apps available, and they serve around 1,000 to 1,500 app downloads per day, with a total downloads to date of 160,000. Unlike on Google Android Market, developers receive a revenue share of 100%. The company says their revenue comes from advertising and deals with OEMs, resellers and carriers. Interestingly, SlideMe, another application store for Android, recently announced they decreased their payout to developers from 95% to 70%, because of the high expenses associated with global billing, and probably other expenses as well.

Another difference with Google’s Android Market is that AndAppStore allows both the Google approved as well as the unapproved applications in their app store. As for billing, they don’t support subscription or in-app billing, but as they support PayPal, paid apps can be distributed in all countries where PayPal support is available.

Currently, the 250 Android apps on AndAppStore is about 1.5% of the total amount of apps available on Google’s Android Market. Like the SlideME Android application store, AndAppStore is not pre-loaded on Android devices, so the company is looking to make deals with OEM’s to gain reach. SlideME announced several of these deals this week, and it will be interesting to see if AndAppStore will follow the same approach, resulting in a trend of non-Google stores coming to Android devices.

We added the store to our app store overview.

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Posted in AndAppStore, Android Market | No Comments »

Sony Ericsson Announces Its First Android Device

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

X10-overview-top

Sony Ericsson just announced the Xperia X10, their first device with Android. According to Gizmodo, it is planned for release in the first quarter of 2010. Initially at least, Sony Ericsson planned to pre-install Android 1.6. Interestingly, although Sony Ericsson has it’s own “PlayNow Arena” application store, Google Android Market will be present on the device as well:

Going out? Finding out? Or perhaps just chilling out? Download any application you want from Android Market™ and customise your Xperia™ X10 to make it exclusively yours.

Sony Ericsson could have pre-installed its own PlayNow Arena store on the device, just like Vodafone Egypt did with the SlideMe application store. They chose not to, and it will be interesting to see whether this choice is an indication of what is to come from Sony Ericsson.

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Posted in Android Market, Sony Ericsson PlayNow | 1 Comment »

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