Archive for September - 2009

Apple’s App Store Reaches 85,000 Apps, 2 Billion Downloads

Posted at 28/09/2009 by Nextology in Application Store, iPhone

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Apple announced on Sept. 28 that its App Store now features 85,000 apps for its iPhone and iPod Touch devices, and that more than 2 billion apps have been downloaded since the service’s launch in July 2008.

In a press release, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that users had downloaded “more than half a billion apps this quarter alone.” However, Apple did not provide a breakdown of how many of those apps were free and how many had a price tag. The release also mentioned that some 120,000 developers are now part of Apple’s iPhone Developer Program, and that the iPod Touch and the iPhone have some 50 million customers worldwide in 77 countries.

The App Store passed the 1-billion-download mark in April 2009. Its success has led other players within the mobile space, including Microsoft and Research In Motion, to attempt their own application stores. In a bid to present a viable alternative to Apple’s offerings, those companies have also opened their stores to contributions by independent developers.

Seeking to create an ecosystem of 600 applications before the October launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft opened its Windows Marketplace to developers over the summer. In order to appeal to those developers seeking a higher profit margin than they might obtain with Apple’s App Store, where many feel pressure to sell their programs for around 99 cents, Microsoft has been encouraging those who submit programs for Windows Marketplace to charge higher prices.

Microsoft has also claimed that applications available through Marketplace will come with a “money-back guarantee.” A Microsoft spokesperson contacted by eWEEK suggested that applications for the store could conceivably be priced anywhere in the $0.99 to $2.99 price range, in addition to any made available for free.

“We would definitely want to promote that you make more money selling applications than selling your application in a dollar store,” Loke Uei, senior technical product manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Developer Experience Team, told mobile application developers in Redmond, Wash., on Aug. 19. “Ninety-nine cents. Come on, I think your app is worth more than that.”

Other companies are likewise attempting to play catch-up in the mobile application space with Apple, although they may have something of an uphill climb. Palm’s App Catalogue, for its WebOS mobile operating system, passed the 1 million downloads mark on June 24, while Google’s Android Market and Nokia’s Ovi Store are still very much in their early stages of growth.

According to Juniper Research, there will be some 20 billion mobile application downloads per year by 2014. “The increasing deployment of app stores targeted at mass market handsets, allied to enhancements in storefront interfaces and an ever-increasing array of titles appealing to wider demographics have been the main factors driving this market,” the research firm said in a July 14 statement accompanying their report on the issue.

Via: eWeek

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Orange UK to Sell iPhone, Ending Exclusivity for O2

Posted at 28/09/2009 by Nextology in Orange UK, iPhone

171569-orange_logo_180_originalOrange will start selling the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS to its U.K. customers later this year, it said on Monday. The deal means that rival network operator O2 will no longer have exclusive rights to sell Apple’s phones in the U.K., something it has enjoyed for almost two years.

Orange is still keeping the details of the launch under wraps. More information on pricing, tariffs and availability dates will be released in due course, Orange said in a statement.

U.K. customers shouldn’t expect a price war between O2 and Orange when the phone is launched, according to Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. The launch of the iPhone, with multiple carriers, in other countries has showed that the operators stay close to each other when it comes to pricing, she said.

Orange doesn’t want to comment on how it plans to differentiate its offer from O2’s, according to a spokeswoman.

Network quality will likely be a key part as Orange tries to differentiate itself, according to Shaun Collins, analyst at CCS Insight. O2’s 3G network has consistently been underperforming compared to those of its competitors, and Orange will want to take advantage of that, he said.

The Orange launch will result in a nice bump in iPhone sales for Apple, according to Milanesi.

That Orange got the iPhone is more evidence of it reinventing itself in the U.K, Collins said. On Sept. 8, Orange owner France Télécom announced that it would set up a joint venture in the U.K. with Deutsche Telekom, owner of the T-Mobile UK mobile network there.

iphoneT-Mobile in Germany and AT&T in the U.S. still have exclusive deals with Apple on the iPhone.

That T-Mobile Germany, holder of the last exclusive iPhone deal in Europe, will lose that exclusivity now seems almost inevitable. In February a French court ended Orange’s monopoly there, while in Sweden Apple increased to three the number of operators selling the iPhone in July.

There is no reason for Apple to work with only one operator in Germany, and not sign deals with more operators to increase its footprint, Milanesi said.

What will happen in the U.S. is trickier to foresee. The launch of a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) version of the iPhone that could be sold by Verizon, is unlikely, according to Milanesi. If Apple had planned to do that it would have launched it in the beginning, and it makes even less sense as the launch nears for LTE (Long Term Evolution), the successor to Verizon’s CDMA and the GSM technology used by AT&T and operators elsewhere, she said.

Via: Pc World

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Vodafone To Launch New Mobile Internet Services

Posted at 26/09/2009 by Nextology in Vodafone

vodafone_logo2LONDON (Dow Jones)–Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) said Thursday it will launch a set of new internet services for mobile and PC that draws on the growing popularity of social networking on the move, as the company tries to carve a niche in the mobile services market against a growing tide of competition from the likes of Apple Inc. (AAPL), Nokia Corp. (NOK) and Google Inc. (GOOG).

The new services, called Vodafone 360, will bring together a customer’s mobile and messaging contacts with their online social networking information, and will be launched by Christmas on two exclusive, and over a hundred non-exclusive, handsets.

The core service on Vodafone 360 is its address book, which draws together mobile, messaging and social networking contacts, and customers can share some of their information with their friends.

In amongst the social life that Vodafone aims to encourage on its phones though, the company’s new mobile services are also designed to get customers to buy applications, music or digital content through its own billing system, a move that directly pits Vodafone against the powerful handset and operating system owners who currently have a strong-hold on mobile e-commerce.

Apple started the trend with its hugely popular App Store, which offers a massive range of free and chargeable application downloads for which Apple takes a cut, selling the items through its established iTunes channel.

Google has since opened up an application store for phones that use its Android operating system, and Nokia’s incarnation is called the Ovi store.

This effectively leaves the network operators like Vodafone, France Telecom SA (FTE) and Deutsche Telekom AG (DT) running huge amounts of internet traffic along their networks but with little benefit from these extra services being sold around them, effectively becoming a ‘dumb pipe’.

While most applications are developed specifically to work on certain phones, depending on which operating system they use, Vodafone announced earlier this year that it was developing its own application platform, which would be operating system agnostic, and allow games and applications to work across almost all of Vodafone’s handset range.

This will launch at the same time as Vodafone 360, with a catalogue of over 1000 applications available to different handsets, for sale through its Vodafone Shop, allowing the company to share in the increasingly lucrative application and services market.

“Customers can stay in touch and share experiences through social networks, instant messaging, email, apps, maps, music and buying digital content on their mobile bill, with the personalised address book at its heart,” said Pieter Knook, Director of Internet Services at Vodafone Group.

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Starbucks Tests Mobile Phone Payment App in 16 Stores

Posted at 25/09/2009 by Nextology in Mobile Couponing, iPhone

starbucks.190 Starbucks is testing a mobile payment system in Seattle and Silicon Valley.

The Starbucks Card Mobile app allows users to add money to their card account from the app using a credit card, and then use it to pay for Starbucks products by swiping a 2-D barcode on the screen, writes the Seattle Times.

Another app tells users where they can find the nearest Starbucks store, along with other information such as which stores have drive-throughs. Both apps are free, and Starbucks is offering promos like free coffee and wi-fi to early adopters of the apps.

Starbucks said it has pondered what some might consider the Holy Grail of coffee applications: the ability to preorder and prepay from a mobile device and have a hot coffee waiting at the head of the lines. But a company spokesperson said the timing of such an application would be tricky, as customers would not want to pre-pay for a hot beverage that has already gone cold by the time they picked it up.

While mobile phone payment systems are not likely to catch on overnight, several key players are plotting possibilities for the future, reports the Financial Times. Nokia is integrating a payment system into its phones, while PayPal is planning a similar expansion. The FT points out that other iPhone apps have attempted to achieve in-store mobile payments, but required additional hardware for the phone.

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