| It is our pleasure to release our monthly Distimo Report, based on December 2009 data. |
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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:
You can download the report here. |
| This report was covered on TechCrunch here. |
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.
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.
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:
The report was covered by TechCrunch here.
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 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.
Last September, we covered SlideME, an independent application store for Android. In short, SlideME is an alternative for Google Android Market. The biggest hurdle for SlideME is that it is not pre-installed on Android phones; this now seems to change.
SlideME landed its first deal with Vodafone Egypt, preloading its app store on the HTC Magic:
SlideME promotion on Vodafone Egypt website
This is great news for SlideME, which could also help them get more deals like this to increase their reach. The main question however is where the Android Market fits in. In the Vodafone promotion SlideME is clearly present, but the Android Market is nowhere to be found.
Is this the first operator that decides to promote an alternative app store on Android, and leaving Android Market from the device? With the open Android platform, is it possible to add new applications, and application stores, to the OS. There might be several reasons for an operator to preload a different application store than Google Android Market, of which a revenue share deal with other application stores is one.
It is not clear if SlideME will completely replace the default Android Market for Vodafone Egypt. We sent an email to the company asking for clarification, and will update this post when we hear more.
Updated: SlideME is indeed replacing the default Android Market for Vodafone Egypt on the HTC Magic. The company also announced a deal with HTC and Etisalat, a major network operator in the United Arab Emirates. Etisalat is also shipping the HTC Magic with SlideME appstore instead of Google’s Android Market pre-loaded.
Acer just announced its first Android phone, the Acer Liquid. The launch date is not mentioned yet, but is expected to be in November.
The Acer Liquid will run the new 1.6 version of the Android OS. It is not confirmed yet if the Android Market will be present on the phone, though it would be very likely. Acer previously announced it would be launching an own app store this year. It is not yet clear whether this will be based on the Android Market.
An updated Android Market will be present in the 1.6 Android OS. As reported earlier, the most important new features of this Android Market are clear separated free and paid application rankings and screenshots of apps. The separated free and paid rankings will make it easier for a developer with paid applications to get visibility in the most popular rankings.
See a demo of the new Android Market below:
Acer is putting a lot of effort into Android: their first netbook running on Android is now also on pre-sale.
Developers that publish applications in Google Android Market can target their apps to specific countries. This allows developers with applications relevant for a local audience to make apps available to a selection of countries. Now the Android Market also has operator targeting:
Publish apps in Android Market
So next to countries, developers can now also aim at specific operator audiences to publish their applications to. An example of a suitable application is T-Mobile My Account, which has been in the US top rankings for several months.
As a result, the content of the Android Market can now differ per operator. Until now, there has been limited variation in the top listings of Android Market per country. The amount of applications that are relevant only to a specific operator’s subscribers base are limited and for now, we do not expect this to have a large influence on the rankings in Android Market. Operator targeting seems mainly useful for operators that offer Android phones and want to bring their own Android applications to their subscriber base.
Android is an open platform. In contrary to Apple’s App Store, users with an Android phone can also download an install applications outside of the Android Market. Google also allows other parties to create their own application stores for Android. An example we reported on yesterday is the AppsLib store from Archos for high-end Android tablet PC’s.
Since April 2008, an independent app store for Android called SlideMe has been around. The store was originally created to fix certain shortcomings the founders saw in the original Android Market:
Have an application that Google prevents you from stocking in the Android Market, leaving you and your app stranded? Are there users desperate to buy your application but they don’t have access to Google Checkout or the Android Market? Do you want to show off your app but feel limited by not having screenshots or video in the Android Market?
If so, then you’ve found the right place at SlideME, the Original Market for Android (We launched our portal and mobile client in April 2008). What we do for the developer is simple. We provide a way to market, deliver and download content to users that you wouldn’t have access to in your traditional channels.
SlideME Application Manager
At this moment, close to 300 applications are available, divided in 16 different application categories. Both free and paid applications are supported.
Consumers that want to download applications, first need to download the SlideME Application Manager to their Android phone. After this, they can browse and download application from the phone. According to SlideME, their application manager was downloaded over 40,000 times.
Consumers that want to purchase applications, first can setup their preferred way of payment on the SlideME website. Current supported payment methods are Amazon Payments and a selection of credit cards. Support for direct bank transfer is coming.
SlideME does not take a revenue share. Developers pay a transaction fee, depending on the exact payment method a consumer uses. According to SlideME, developer share can get as high as 98%. SlideME’s business model is to charge for licensing and branding of the storefront and client. Their aim is to get the store pre-installed by handset manufacturers.
SlideME is not the only independent app store for Android, and it will be interesting to see how this will develop. Will a lot of new stores for Android emerge and start competing on revenue share for developers? Possibly, but for gaining a large consumer reach, presence on the device itself is crucial. Google of course has this, but device manufacturers like Archos are also capable of putting a pre-installed market on the consumer device.
We will keep track on SlideME and other independent stores to see how the available content and consumer reach will develop over time. SlideME was added to our mobile app store overview.
There were already some signs of an upcoming update of the Android Market. Now Google confirmed a new Android Market version:
I’m pleased to let you know about several updates to Android Market. First, we will soon introduce new features in Android Market for Android 1.6 that will improve the overall experience for users. As part of this change, developers will be able to provide screenshots, promotional icons and descriptions that will better show off applications and games.
We have also added four new sub-categories for applications: sports, health, themes, and comics. Developers can now choose these sub-categories for both new and existing applications via the publisher website. Finally, we have added seller support for developers in Italy. Italian developers can go to the publisher website to upload applications and target any of the countries where paid applications are currently available to users. (Google’s Eric Chu)
A major change in the top listings is that paid and free applications are now separated, providing better insight in the available paid content. Here is a video of the new Android Market version, which should be coming to current Android phone soon:
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