Distimo Blog

Our Presentation From Plugg 2010

Vincent Hoogsteder — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:54:18 +0000

Yesterday we were at Plugg 2010. Big thanks to the Plugg team for organizing a great European event with an audience of many cool new start-ups and VC’s. Distimo was one of the three finalists that got to present at the event’s startup rally.

Twenty start-ups got to pitch their company in 2 minutes. To view our 2 minute pitch, scroll to 11:00 in this video:

Startups Rally – Part I – Elevator Pitches (1 of 4) from Plugg Conference on Vimeo.

After the 2 minute pitch, Distimo also got selected as one of the three finalists to present again for 10 minutes. See our full presentation here:

Startups Rally – Part II – Final Pitches from Plugg Conference on Vimeo.

Here are the slides from our presentation:

View more presentations from Distimo.

For more content from the event, see all pictures and videos.

Vodafone India Appstore Publicly Launched

Gert Jan Spriensma — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:40:39 +0000

Vodafone logo

About a month ago we reported on the launch of two domestic appstores in India. As it appears now, Vodafone India already launched their app store on February 15, but only revealed its existence after they crossed the 10,000 downloads figure.

The new app store offers around 800 apps, which are both local and international. Only 15% of the apps are free of charge, which is compared to other appstore a rather low figure. However, most paid apps are in the Rs. 5 to Rs. 30 range (<1 USD).

Vodafone decided to outsource the development of the store and launched the store along with the Arvato Mobile, a content logistics and service delivery platform. Since Vodafone already rolled out their 360 platform in various countries, they now run two platforms.

DARPA Announces Military App Store

Gert Jan Spriensma — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:49:14 +0000

More and more appstores recently see the light of day, all trying to get a piece of a market which will, according to research2guidance, hit the 15bn USD in 2013. However, the development of the new appstore of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is most likely less financially motivated. A couple of days ago they announced that an apps marketplace will be created to enable innovation to meet user needs based on collaboration between the development community and the involved communities of end-users.

DARPA chose the Android platform for the initial implementation. They already ruled out Windows in an early stage and recently dropped the iPhone platform as well. According to the announcement: “DARPA is seeking applications to fill a diverse set of needs, including the tactical battlefield, humanitarian missions, disaster recovery, and other mission areas. Example functionalities include command and control, reporting, mission planning, intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance, real-time collaboration, geospatial visualization, analysis, language translation, training, and logistics tracking. Special attention must be paid to the apps’ user interfaces and usability functions, as well as striving towards general simplicity and ease-of-use”.

LiMo Joins Wholesale Applications Community

Gert Jan Spriensma — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:13:51 +0000

At the Mobile World Congress a consortium, including major operators, launched the Wholesale Application Community. LiMo (Linux Mobile) foundation, which was launched in 2007, today sent an open letter to the Wholesale Application Community. In this letter LiMo offers to the Wholesale Application Community:

full support;
committed participation;
immediate practical assistance in a spirit of whole-industry cooperation.

LiMo Foundation is dedicated to creating the first truly open, hardware-independent, Linux-based operating system for mobile devices and consist of more than 50 partners. However the foundation faces increasing competition from other big linux iniatives like Android (Google) and Maemo (Nokia), where Motorola downgraded in October 2009 its membership to ‘associate’ noting that ‘at this time it feels that the Android platform gives it a richer, more consistent foundation with strong support for the ecosystem and developer community’.

On the other side, since LiMo’s launch, three major releases of the LiMo Platform have been delivered within a planned roadmap, 52 LiMo devices have been brought to market including the Vodafone 360 H1 and Vodafone 360 M1 devices from Samsung and a wide range of devices for NTT DOCOMO from Panasonic and NEC, while the overall LiMo Membership has expanded to more than 50 companies.

It will be interesting to see how LiMo’s role in the Wholesale Applications Community will develop the coming months, we’ll keep you posted.

Distimo Presenting At Plugg

Vincent Hoogsteder — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:40:24 +0000

On Thursday March 11 the Plugg conference will be held in Brussels. Plugg is a one-day conference with a clear focus on celebrating entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe and raising global awareness for those European start-ups in the Web / Mobile 2.0 field that stand out in the crop.

We are glad to announce that Distimo was selected as one of the European startups to present at the Plugg Startup Rally. You can find the full list of presenting companies here.

We are looking forward to the event next week, hope to see you in Brussels. If you would like to meet, please send us a note.

Distimo Report January 2010 – Games

Remco van den Elzen — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:28:45 +0000

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:

Games on Windows Marketplace for Mobile and BlackBerry App World are most expensive at $4.91 and $4.60 (on average) respectively.
The Games category on the Apple App Store with the most titles available is Puzzle.
Games published in the Role Playing category on the Apple App Store are most expensive, averaging $7.96 per game. Most other game categories average between $1.30 and $2.60.
22% of the most grossing game titles in the Apple App Store were published in the Action category. The Arcade and Adventure categories were second and third with 12% and 9%, respectively. Interestingly enough, although the Puzzle category is the largest games category in the Apple App Store, relatively few of these games generate enough revenue to be ranked among the top grossing game titles.

You can download the report here.

New Apple App Store Category ‘explicit’?

Gert Jan Spriensma — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:46:39 +0000

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.

PocketGear Acquires Handango

Gert Jan Spriensma — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:18:26 +0000

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)

Our Presentation From Mobile World Congres 2010 – Mobile Application Stores State Of Play

Vincent Hoogsteder — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:43:22 +0000

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.

New White Label Appstore Announced By Ericsson

Gert Jan Spriensma — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:24:56 +0000

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.