Archive for the category: iPhone
Posted at 9/11/2009 by Nextology in iPhone
 So much for the coming mobile nirvana of free mobile content – at least for iPhone users in Germany. Today Europe’s biggest newspaper, BILD-Zeitung, intends to use, in effect, brute force to compel users buy its new iPhone app. The paper tabloid is going to block anyone using an iPhone browser from accessing its website.
Now, readers will not only have to pay for the dedicated BILD iPhone app, but they also need to pony-up recurring fees for new articles. The same is planned for Axel Springer’s quality paper Die Welt. Users of Nokia, Blackberry, HTC or other smartphone brands will not be blocked – but only for as long as it takes for Springer to develop an app for each device.
Until now, Bild.de was Germany’s second most visited news site with 5.6m unique users and 1.36bn page impressions per month. It’s catching up fast with the market leader Spiegel online which is only on 20,000 unique users away. But this growth could suffer a setback as the site’s holding company, Axel Springer AG, plans to implement this pay per use model.
Springer announced in August that in the long run every smartphone user will have to pay to access their content. The iPhone is the first device because its users are “especially ready to pay“, as CEO Mathias Döpfner puts it. The first guinea pig was the €0.79 iPhone app for Berlin’s biggest newspaper BZ that was released in October. Admittedly he has a point – iPhone users do pay for apps.
But blocking iPhone users, which in the US now make up 50 percent of smartphone web traffic and blow everyone else away with their data usage, is a dangerous move.
Döpfner himself says that today the iPhone makes up more than a half of Springer’s mobile users. As long as competitors give their news away for free and iPhone users can read the two newspapers on their laptops without a charge, his company can only lose, at least in theory.
Of course, the strategy may well back-fire, even when it could use more readers, unimpared by pay walls. BILD gets constantly censured by the German Press Council for sensational journalism and Springer’s prestigious title, Die Welt, has been losing money for most of its life since its foundation in 1946.
This bizarre strategy from Axel Springer is in marked contrast to other European newspapers, which are in the main a lot more generous to iPhone users.
The UK’s Guardian newspaper has a full iPhone browser version as well as a great generic mobile website. Even the prestigious Financial Times has a gratis iPhone app to access most of its content for free.
Incurable news junkies can get their fix from the €1.59 iPhone app World Newspapers which provides free access to 4,000 newspapers in almost 200 countries.
Seems like Axel Springer either didn’t get the memo – or it thinks its cunning plan will work.
Via: Techcrunch
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Posted at 4/11/2009 by Nextology in Application Store, iPhone
 Apple has just announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the App Store, the official source for iPhone and iPod touch software
At this point, customers in 77 countries have downloaded well over two billion apps, continuing to make it the world’s most popular software store.
“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile.
A Brief History of the iPhone App Store
When the original iPhone was announced in early 2007, Apple said it would not allow other companies to release native software for this smartphone. Instead, they could only make Web apps that ran in the browser.
For the entire first year this device was on the market, native third-party applications were blocked. This lead to a significant percentage of devices being “jail-broken” — modified to remove this restriction.
Only tremendous demand from users forced Apple to change course, and the App Store debuted with the launch of the second-generation iPhone.
Lots of Competition
When Apple launched its software store, the idea of an on-device application store was hardly a new one — companies like Handango have offered them for years –but the early ones met with limited success. The popularity of the iPhone version has breathed new life into this concept, and virtually all of Apple’s competitors are seeking to imitate this accomplishment.
Read a ReviewBoth Google’s Android OS and Palm’s webOS debuted with a software store part of their basic feature set, RIM has launched the BlackBerry App World, while Nokia has the Ovi Store. In addition, Microsoft introduced an application store for Windows Mobile devices last month.
Still, none of these have been able to match the App Store. In second place is the Android Market, which has around 12,000 apps.
Via: Brighthand.com
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Posted at 20/10/2009 by Nextology in iPhone
 Apple Inc. continued to power through the recession as it posted a 47% quarterly profit jump as consumers continued to snap up its iPhones and Macintosh computers.
The company also sounded an upbeat note for the holiday season, despite new competition in the smart-phone and PC markets. Shares of Apple surged more than 6% after the results were released, eclipsing $200.
Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter ended Sept. 26, up 7% from a year ago and 41% more than the previous quarter, bucking concerns of a supply constraint. Demand was fed by a price drop and a faster iPhone model announced in June, which it has been gradually rolling out in overseas markets.
“We feel very, very good about suiting up and competing against anyone,” Tim Cook, Apple’s operating chief, said on a conference call. “Frankly, I think that people are really just trying to catch up with the first iPhone that was announced two years ago, and we’ve long since moved beyond that.”
Apple also sold 3.1 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, up 17% from a year earlier, as it continued to gain ground on Windows-based machines. In the quarter, Apple released Snow Leopard, a major upgrade to its Mac operating system, and it said initial sales have been double that of the previous upgrade two years ago. Microsoft Corp. will release a new version of its rival software, Windows 7, this week.
While Wall Street had feared that expectations for Apple’s earnings could be too high, the results exceeded even the most optimistic expectations. “I’m shocked,” said Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu.
Overall, Apple reported a fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 a share, compared with $1.14 billion, or $1.26 a share, a year earlier. Its gross profit margin rose to 36.6% from 34.7% a year ago. Revenue increased 24% to $9.87 billion from $7.9 billion a year earlier.
Apple’s strong results appear to indicate that overall consumer spending is recovering. Other technology companies have also recently posted positive earnings, including Intel Corp. and Google Inc.
“This quarter really signals that we’re coming out of the trough,” said Gene Munster, an analyst for Piper Jaffray. “You don’t see too many blow-out quarters like that, especially when you’re the size of Apple.”
Apple’s shares, which have nearly doubled over the past year, rose 6.1% to $201.50 in late trading, after closing up about 1% at $189.86 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
For the current quarter, Apple’s forecast for earnings and profit were less conservative than in the past. The company projected per-share earnings of about $1.70 to $1.78 with revenue between $11.3 billion to $11.6 billion.
Via: Wall Street Journal
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Posted at 17/10/2009 by Nextology in Application Store, iPhone
 Apple has expanded its iPhone e-commerce platform to free apps, essentially, cracking the market for micro-transactions on the iPhone wide open. The company emailed developers the news today. Previously, In App Purchase capabilities were only allowed in paid apps, so this creates a number of new money-making opportunities for developers and content publishers.
Startups can create “freemium” versions of their apps, for example, that only let users access a limited number of features as a trial, and require a paid upgrade for full service. Game developers that may have been wary of charging $5.99 for a title can now offer it for free with on-going subscription charges, or even monetize through virtual goods sales.
Even enterprise-facing apps can benefit; restaurants and hotels, for example, could create free apps that let users pay for reservations or prix fixe events in advance. “This announcement changes the landscape of the App Store as we know it,” said Colin Smith, co-founder and vice president of Freeverse, which offers a number of popular iPhone games and augmented reality apps.
The news also has potential benefits for online publishers that are trying to figure out how to get users to pay for their content. While media companies like The Journal, CNN and Hachette Filippachi have launched premium apps, others can give readers access to some of their content for free, and then charge for special reports and articles.
Via: MocoNews.net
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Posted at 28/09/2009 by Nextology in Application Store, iPhone
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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